html error when posting

[Douglas Wolfinger]

Hello,
Why am I getting the message that the parenthesis in an html tag is not allowed in Java Beginner General? I am not try to include an html tag, just post a question and source code. I have been alerted that sheriffs are working on this. Is there a way to work around this error when posting source code?
Thanks!

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

The only way I know of is that you can substitute &lt; instead of the < sign.
[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Marilyn deQueiroz ]

[Michael Ernest]

That's just it, Marilyn, there aren't any HTML tags involved. I just ran into it myself answering a question in Programmer Certification. No HTML tags in my source code, but I got that same error.
Here's what I was trying to post, between CODE tags, natch.

[Junilu Lacar]

Must be a tokenizing error then. Seems like the UBB sees the "<" as the start of an HTML tag and/or the ">" as closing it.
Junilu

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

I turned off html in JiG(b) as an experiment, and it seems to have resolved the problem. I can now post a for loop.

see: an example I posted first without code tags and edited it to include them. No problem either way.

The question is, do we want to do this for other forums as well?

[Michael Ernest]

It was my impression that HTML shouldn't be read between CODE tags. If that's true, can we fix that?

[paul wheaton]

It is possible that the UBB folks think that you might be trying to put some sort of hack into your message that is going to make a big mess of things. I'm trying to get the UBB folks to talk to me about this issue and maybe we can find a way to fix this.
One way, I suppose, is that we can turn HTML off for all forums. This might not be a bad idea.
What do you guys think?

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

The only disadvantage I can think of is that we will be unable to change fonts attributes (size, type).

[paul wheaton]

Are there any new UBB codes that allow those sorts of font changes?
Since most of us are geeks, most of us have memorized the HTML codes to make text sing for us. So a newbie here may be very familiar with html and not so familiar with UBB codes.

[Jim Hall]

I am also getting this error about parenthesis not allowed in HTML tag.

[Jim Yingst]

Assuming we can't find another workaround (and none seems readily apparent), I think it would be best to turn off HTML in all forums. Except perhaps MD? I'd like one forum where we can still experiment with HTML, to remind us what we're missing, and to see if someone can come up with a better way to allow HTML and < to coexist in UBB. I would certainly miss being able to use HTML elsewhere in the ranch, but I think it's more important that people can easily post code without having to replace all the < with &lt;. We can probably survive without the added flexibility of HTML. Well, maybe...

[Jim Yingst]

I'm trying out various things to see how the new system works:
parens: ( )(foobar)(foo)( foo )
brackets: [ ][foobar][foo][ foo ]
curly braces:{ }{foobar}{foo}{ foo }
angle braces:< ><foobar><foo>< foo >
<pre>
parens: ( )(foobar)(foo)( foo )
brackets: [ ][foobar][foo][ foo ]
curly braces:{ }{foobar}{foo}{ foo }
angle braces:< ><foobar><foo>< foo >
</pre>

parens:      ( )(foobar)(foo)( foo )
brackets:    [ ][foobar][foo][ foo ]
curly braces:{ }{foobar}{foo}{ foo }
angle braces:< ><foobar><foo>< foo >

[Jim Yingst]

OK, with some experimentation I found the problem - it's when you have a < symbol which is eventually followed by a ( symbol, before a > symbol. It doesn't seem to matter if there are spaces or line breaks - the system keeps looking until it finds a >. (I only posted this by using &lt;, etc. of course.) Very annoying - a rather stupid parsing bug which was not present in earlier UBB versions. This combination will occur often enough in code that we really can't expect folks to use escape characters, I think - we'll need to turn off HTML unless UBB has a fix, or someone finds another workaround. Does anyone have any other ideas or suggestions?

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

I think that html could be left on in this forum as well and a few other forums where people never (or rarely) post code (thinking off the top of my head of the Cattle Drive forum and the forums listed under Engineering, Products, Careers, This Site, and Other)

By the way, I've already turned it off in Java in General (beginner) and Programmer Certification Study. I doubt that Java News posters would use much code either.
[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Marilyn deQueiroz ]

[Tom Diamond]

Well I don't know if this is a problem but the other day, when I tried to write < java_home > (without the spaces between <> symbols and words) the system "ate" the whole phrase...
As for the HTML On/Off issue I guess that now with the new interface UBB is very easy to use.
By the way, my opinion is that the folder icons showing new posts and "burning" forums shouldn't have changed. Old ones were better...
Tom.
[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Diamond ]
[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Diamond ]
[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Tom Diamond ]

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

Originally posted by Tom Diamond:
Well I don't know if this is a problem but the other day, when I tried to write < java_home > (without the spaces between <> symbols and words) the system "ate" the whole phrase...

Yep. That's the way it used to be. <java_home> Hmmm. Let's see....

Yep, still is (at least in this forum where html is still enabled).
[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Marilyn deQueiroz ]

[Jim Yingst]

Tom - yes, that's the way it's always been. Most of us have just gotten used to putting a space after the <, or using &lt; if we really have to. Even in the old days this was a problem, and it was occasionally suggested that we should turn off HTML in most forums because of it - but most of us are too attached to our HTML, and we only turned it off in a few key forums where people needed to frequently post about HTML or XML tags. But with this new additional bug, it looks like there's enough added incentive to make the switchoever for most other forums as well.
I'll plan to switch over all the forums under "Java" and "Professional Certification" to no HTML late this evening, unless I hear objections or other ideas. (Paul?) I'm not sure about the others - everythin in under "Careers" and "Other" never really need to post code, and ought to have HTML. The other categories are iffy - I'll leave them alone for now. But any bartender who wants their forum changed from HTML to no-HTML (or vice versa), just let me or another sheriff know, and we can take care of that.

[Raji Addepalli]

I am also getiing the same error

[Jim Yingst]

OK, I've disabled HTML for all forums in the "Java" and "Professional Certification" groups. Let me know if I missed any, or if other forums need adjustment - or if there are unforseen problems with this, or course. Enjoy...

[Garann Means]

Maybe this belongs under a different topic, but I got the same error people were mentioning, only there were no < or >s in my message anywhere. Not even in code blocks.
The problem, I guess, was the word 'onMouseOver'. I separated it out into three words, and the message went through fine. I couldn't find any reference to this behavior in the FAQ or the UBB specifications.
g.

[Jim Yingst]

Yes, this is probably the best place for that post. Looks like another bug, related to the first - anytime "mouseover" appears without an internal space, followed by an "=" (with optional whitespace), it is disallowed. I'm guessing this will also be a problem for other similar event tags...
[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Mapraputa Is]

onMouseOver
Jim, your "proof" is incorrect. It's "onMouseOver", not "onmouseover"
[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Jim Yingst]

My "proof" was a series of tests, consecutively re-edited - which showed me, among other things, that "correct" spelling is irrelevant to UBB's bugs.
Of course, there can be good reasons to disallow onMouseOver and the like at the ranch. Right Map? :roll: But only if it's actually a part of the HTML - the bug in UBB is that it's disallowing the word + "=" entirely. Ugh.
[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Mapraputa Is]

They prohibited "onMouseOver"???
Boys, this was the only way to... Well... Just how cruel the world can be.

[Mapraputa Is]

It's not only onmouseOver()
I tried to post a link to API's doc for UnicastRemoteObject constructor and got this message:
"Sorry, your post appears to have an illegal HTML tag."
My link was:
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/....UnicastRemoteObject.html#Un icastRemoteObject
(shortened to improve readability)
with "()" at the end. UBB allows the URL above only if it doesn't have "()" at the end!
[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Jim Yingst]

Yes, this is another example of the original problem - UBB doesn't like parentheses inside HTML tags, or even things that look remotely similar to HTML tags (i.e., anything following a '<'). Actually, this may be the first example posted where it applies inside a real HTML tag. I've had to modify several of my API links to go to a class rather than a specific method, for precisely this reason.

[Mapraputa Is]

I fooled it. In URLs we can escape () as &#40;&#41;
Click here
[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]

[Jamie Robertson]

I am getting the error message:
FYI
Sorry, your post appears to have an illegal HTML tag. Often this is because the post contains a "<" character instead of the equivalent HTML escape sequence "<"
You can fix this by replacing every " < " in your post with "& lt;".
The specific error message is: Parenthesis in HTML tag
� Please use your browser's back button to return.
when posting the following message in the jdbc forum:
unacceptable post

I don't see any tags that may be causing this problem???
Jamie

[Jim Yingst]

It's referring to the parentheses in your [url] tag (which UBB converts to HTML internally). Map's trick should work here - though of course it's a pain in the butt to replace characters like that.

[Clive van Hilten]

I have a similar problem. I have replaced my < , >, ( , and ) characters with the HTML escape sequences and still get this error in the Beginner's forum:
FYI
Sorry, your post appears to have an illegal HTML tag. Often this is because the post contains a "<" character instead of the equivalent HTML escape sequence "<"
You can fix this by replacing every "<" in your post with "<".
The specific error message is: ONERROR


The post is
here. Please use IE to get to the post, for some reason Opera doesn't keep the page formatting.
I have looked at the UBB code help on Javaranch, I have looked at the UBB userguide at infopop.com but no useful help found.
Please help, this is driving me up the wall!!
Thank you.
Clive van Hilten
[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: Clive van Hilten ]