URLs with Parentheses Mess Up Displayed Links

Started by morel on Saturday, January 10, 2015
Problem with this page?

Participants:

Showing all 11 posts
1/10/2015 at 1:51 PM

In a project, when adding a link with a URL that contains parentheses, the resulting link displayed is messed up. Look for example in this project:

http://www.geni.com/projects/HMCS-Kootenay-258-Explosion-on-October...

you see at the top I am trying to have a link to Wikipedia with this URL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Kootenay_(DDE_258)

The parentesis after the "258" is messing up things.

Does anyone have a way around this?

Thanks,

mario

1/10/2015 at 2:34 PM

Add a trailing underscore after the (close paranthes). It's a weird Unicode bug I think, totally annoying. But this fixes it.

Private User
1/10/2015 at 2:55 PM

It is not a unicode bug, - parentheses are simply not valid characters in an URL, - you see them as that is some browsers, but technically they are not encoded as parentheses, - the ( is actually encoded as %28 and the ) as %29 when you enters them as a URL and click load.

The solution is as you would conclude: replace at least the ) with %29 a project description or about-me.

Private User
1/10/2015 at 4:04 PM

One good help is to use another webreader, like mozilla,
when you copy the link in the adressfoeld, it automatically
turns it to valid characters, work for me anyway.
This is the past result
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Kootenay_%28DDE_258%29

1/10/2015 at 4:31 PM

Fabulous! Thanks a million friends.

1/10/2015 at 7:30 PM

The solution is to replace ( and ) with %28 and %29. I think it is a problem in the code that converts the markup format in "about" fields ( [ url description ] ) into <a href="url">description</a> - it considers ) to end the URL, and it shouldn't.

1/10/2015 at 7:36 PM

actually ( and ) ARE allowed in the "path" part of URLs. RFC 3968 section 2.2, definition of "sub-delims", which are allowed in "segment".

Private User
1/11/2015 at 1:19 AM

You are correct that the main problem is the text parser in Geni not understanding that the trailing ) should be a part of the URL, but a RFC is still just a RFC, - suggestions that might lead to a standard...

1/11/2015 at 2:07 AM

In the case of RFC 3968, it's a Best Current Practice.
The naming of Internet standards is peculiar, but you don't get to be more standard than that..... (says the man who wrote the "Mission statement for the IETF"....)

7/16/2016 at 2:29 AM

I have filed a bug: http://help.geni.com/requests/83785

(Posting here with full knowledge that nobody can probably read it anyhow, for whatever reason).

7/16/2016 at 2:44 AM

It's a "feature" of zendesk that filing a bug report for others to "me too" is not under "submit a request.". That opens a private ticket, as you note.

It's the "suggest an idea" button:

http://help.geni.com/forums/338907-bug-reports/entries/new

Showing all 11 posts

Create a free account or login to participate in this discussion