[Tb] exporting filenames (was no subject)

On Mar 25, 2004, at 1:24 PM, Mark Bernstein wrote:

> > Tinderbox always strips spaces and punctuation from file names, since
> > for many servers these generate errors.
>
> and Jeremy Cherfas points, correctly, that if you explicitly put
> spaces or punctuation in the value of? HTMLExportFileName, they aren't
> stripped.
>
> That's true: if you explicitly choose a file name, Tinderbox does what
> you tell it to do.? By "always", I meant that the default file name
> generator strips spaces and punctuation, without respect to the
> attribute settings I was discussing.

That there are different behaviors (which I do appreciate) for
apparently similar aspects of TB is a very interesting and helpful
thing to be aware of. It can save a great deal of hair-pulling.

> This, incidentally, is another example of why tech support is a much
> better place to discuss details like this.? Why should we bore 30 or
> 50 people getting to the bottom of this, when Jeremy and someone at
> Eastgate could get the answer and then, if the answer is sufficiently
> interesting, report back?

Not trying to be argumentative here, but Jeremy had originally posted
this to the official wiki, on AskHere. He received little response, and
then circled around to this list, and offered a revised version of his
situation and questions. This met with greater response and revelation,
which evolved thru a couple of rounds of discussion via email.

My experience with just sending messages to support (I'm generalizing
here, not an indictment of the good TB folks) is that information is
rarely shared. The support folks know the information, and may not
think there is a need to share that information more broadly, until
someone else asks that question again. The person originally seeking
tech support all too often doesn't think to share, since their own
problem is solved, and they are moving forward with their task. And so
the shared information is essentially kept private..

Mark, would it be possible to create a section of the wiki that acts as
a repository for the issues that TB tech support has most recently
fielded successfully?

I'm not asking for a raw feed of the emails, but simply a place where
recently answered TS questions can exist in the public view. A
sanitized version of the particulars involved would be perfectly fine
(perhaps even better than the raw details), and could eventually serve
to lighten the load on TB tech support, particularly if the TB user
base should see a sudden jump in numbers (perhaps based on an eventual
release onto another OS platform).

I think this would be a great addition to the place we already have for
asking questions there, which are usually met with good response.

PS: If the diff feature on the wiki is enabled, is there a visual clue
that I should be noticing when I visit what I expect to be the diff
version of a page? Perhaps wrongly, I'm expecting to see a version of a
page which has the inseerted or deleted text highlighted in some manner
to stand out from the text which has not changed. If the diff isn't
enabled with a visual indicator, is it possible to do that?

Cheers,

-- 
Greg Hanek    ghanek__AT__indiana.edu
.disclaimer     .pithy_quote