If someone is to write a long piece of text (though this bug applies to any length) in another text editor outside of Sylestia, be it word or notepad or google docs or whatever, copy & pasting it in will cause issues. The main body of the text, the characters, will be properly copied over, but any apostrophes (') and quotation marks (") will be removed.

The strange part of this is when you are in the 'create new post' window, in the message box, your copy & paste will show the apostrophes and quotation marks. However, once 'post' is clicked, all the marks vanish, leaving only letters and basic punctuation like comas and periods. Clicking 'edit' will open up the message box, and this time, without the apostrophes or quotation marks.

This is slightly annoying when copying large amounts of pre-written things and having to go through and manually replace each mark that is at danger of being erased.

I think this has to do with codes for those specific punctuation marks. Some newer devices are using new codes for ' and " which are causing them to be parsed out by our text sanitizing script.

I remember having this issue pop up a few times and IIRC, it was coming from apple devices. Are you by chance writing these posts on an apple device/program?

No, I use a windows computer.'

Edit: I just copied an apostrophe from the google search bar and that works

I just tried it from Openoffice Writer and from notepad and it works.

One thing I have noticed through a chat feature on another website is that some applications/programs have something called 'smart quotes' which the chat doesn't seem to like. Maybe look up and see if the program you are using utilizes those and turn them off (I couldn't find it in open office, but if I recall, it is the difference between the straight up and down ' and " and the ones that are fancier and slightly curved)

I couldn't find it in openoffice, but it may be under 'autocorrect' to change from smart to straight quotes.

This may not be your problem, just something I have seen on another website with smart quotes and copy/pasting.

@Jemadar

That seems to be the case, I never noticed! Thanks for pointing that out!


@Krin

Jem was right, and I checked to see which characters they were specifically. If the text sanitising script has a list of whitelisted characters that can be added to, the 'smart quote' apostrophes are 'U+2019 : RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK {single comma quotation mark}' and 'U+2018 : LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK {single turned comma quotation mark}'. The 'smart quote' quotation marks are 'U+201C : LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK {double turned comma quotation mark}' and 'U+201D : RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK {double comma quotation mark}'.

You're welcome.

I read a little about the differences between the types of quotes, and honestly, I don't get it :P I mean I understand the differences, but see all these sites saying 'you should use 'smart' quotes as 'correct' punctuation' and I honestly rarely see a difference in the two.

Oh well :P to each their own.

I am just glad that I have had experience with that chat (when someone tries to copy/paste a smart quote, it posts 'Null' and confuses the poor people because they never think about the puncutation. They want to know what words are banned in the chat :P Fortunately, the regulars of the chat are pretty savvy now about seeing null and going 'oh, you have smart quotes turned on! Chat doesn't like that'.)

Thank you both for the additional information.

I will take a look and see if there's an updated way of sanitizing text to allow for smart quotes.

I am going to move this thread into the Known Issues Forum for the time being.