AOL xmls (AWOL xml's...??)

[pbmnoot]

A post on the pbmforum detailed a method of fixing garbled xml's - a
tedious Replace operation that takes out the extra spaces found when
opened in Notepad. This fix doesn't always work for me (?) - I always
then get the Illegal Character message and can't find this illegal
character. Sometimes it tells me where, other times it says "Line 0"
(??). The times it shows text up to the illegal character, I've
actually found that particular spot..and there was nothing wrong with
the ensuing text. Typed over it to no avail.

Tried Peter Deglopper's fix also to no avail. Palantir actually
crashed when I tried to load that xml. Did it right, got the
characters he described. Might be Win98 tripping me up here (or both?) ~?

There's always stuff happening in the background here, so can those of
us stuck with multiple AOL teammates get an update on where this is
all headed?

Many thanks,

Brad
ps - lots of internet options out there...shop around folks! ;-)

[pdeglopper2000]

--- In mepbmlist (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, "pbmnoot" <bbrunec296@r...> wrote:
> A post on the pbmforum detailed a method of fixing garbled xml's - a
> tedious Replace operation that takes out the extra spaces found when
> opened in Notepad. This fix doesn't always work for me (?) - I always
> then get the Illegal Character message and can't find this illegal
> character. Sometimes it tells me where, other times it says "Line 0"
> (??). The times it shows text up to the illegal character, I've
> actually found that particular spot..and there was nothing wrong with
> the ensuing text. Typed over it to no avail.

Yeah, the space replacement trick is close but not quite perfect. The
problem is that you're then left with the equivalent of iso-8859-1
escaped special characters in the text - to get it to really work you
need to either find and replace all non-standard letters, or convert
the encoding to UTF-8 if your text editor is smart enough. That's
pretty close to what I do to clean up my teammates' AOL-mangled XML
files with Emacs.

One trick that might well work if you do the space removal thing is to
prepend the following to the beginning of the file, before the <METURN
....> element:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
I know for a fact that doesn't work with Automagic, but it looks like
it works for Palantir. You have to do the space removal first, though.

> Tried Peter Deglopper's fix also to no avail. Palantir actually
> crashed when I tried to load that xml. Did it right, got the
> characters he described. Might be Win98 tripping me up here (or
both?) ~?

Hmm. I haven't seen that. Did you also remove the extra linefeed
characters, as I described in the post archived at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mepbmlist/message/14409 ?

You can try loading the XML file in IE and seeing if that gives you
more information - I've yet to see an XML file which IE likes but
which gives Palantir trouble.

If the above doesn't fix it, and the XML file is not for a game I'm
playing in (223 and 136) feel free to forward it to me and I'll take a
look.

-Peter

[Colin Forbes]

Hint ... don't use AOL :-) It's expensive, unreliable and unlikely to
improve.

Colin

[Mark Jeffries]

seconded

----- Original Message -----
From: "Colin Forbes" <colin@...>
To: <mepbmlist (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com>
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 5:54 PM
Subject: [mepbmlist] Re: AOL xmls (AWOL xml's...??)

> Hint ... don't use AOL :-) It's expensive, unreliable and unlikely to
> improve.
>
> Colin
>
>
>
> Middle Earth PBM - hit reply to send to everyone
> To Unsubscribe: http://www.yahoogroups.com
> Website: http://www.MiddleEarthGames.com
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

[pdeglopper2000]

--- In mepbmlist (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com, D N <nanooknw@y...> wrote:
> For AOL users (or teammtes processing AOL xml's), try
> the solution below. It's a guide I wrote to fixing the
> AOL changes, based on the steps provided by
> Peter.(Thanks, Peter!)

Incidentally, I'm now inclined to think that the space removal plus
explicit encoding declaration approach is easier. And it has the
extra advantage of leaving the file in a format you can view without IE.

To reiterate, to do this:
1) Open the AOL-corrupted XML file in Notepad. You should see a space
before every normal character. Notepad turns the undisplayable
character AOL adds into a space.
2) Using search and replace, replace all instances of two spaces in a
row (" ") with the $ character, or anything else that doesn't occur
elsewhere in the XML file.
3) Using search and replace, delete all instances of a single space ("
"). Leaving the replacement field blank should allow this.
4) Using search and replace, replace all instances of $ with a single
space (" ").

At this point, you've removed all the AOL-added undisplayable
characters. There shouldn't be any extra spaces left. The only
problem now is that the special characters are encoded as iso-8859-1
rather than UTF-8.

The only reason the cumbersome multi-step $ trick is required is that
Notepad can't distinguish between the AOL-added undisplayable
characters and real spaces. If you have a text editor which does make
that distinction, and which lets you search and replace for the
undisplayable character (which Wordpad can't do, unfortunately) you
can just delete the undisplayable characters.

If your version of notepad or other text editor allows you to specify
that the file should be saved as UTF-8, do that and you should have a
working XML file. Test it out in IE and make sure it loads without
errors. If you can do this, you should be able to use the file in
Automagic as well as Palantir.

If you can't save as UTF-8, you can specify the encoding for Palantir
by adding this line to the start of the file, before <METURN...:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

I mentioned the encoding setting earlier today, but I'm not sure I was
clear on how it interacts with the spacing tricks.

-Peter

[R.K.Floyd]

Only use AOL as a secondary program if your fiance pays for it anyway. :)

Russ
Part-Time AOL'er


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Jeffries" <mark@...>
To: <mepbmlist (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com>
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 2:12 PM
Subject: Re: [mepbmlist] Re: AOL xmls (AWOL xml's...??)


> seconded
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Colin Forbes" <colin@...>
> To: <mepbmlist (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com>
> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 5:54 PM
> Subject: [mepbmlist] Re: AOL xmls (AWOL xml's...??)
>
>
> > Hint ... don't use AOL :-) It's expensive, unreliable and unlikely to
> > improve.
> >
> > Colin
> >
> >
> >
> > Middle Earth PBM - hit reply to send to everyone
> > To Unsubscribe: http://www.yahoogroups.com
> > Website: http://www.MiddleEarthGames.com
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> Middle Earth PBM - hit reply to send to everyone
> To Unsubscribe: http://www.yahoogroups.com
> Website: http://www.MiddleEarthGames.com
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>