Another new bug

[iwatchus]

I am bringing thing over from another thread (StillStunned's amazing changing thread not about AI)

The site is currently mis-rendering some parts of at least some stories. @onehitwanda first noted this in the other thread.

Some, but not all, section breaks, as given by center tags, are being clobbered. Looking at the rendered HTML, the site replaced the open < of both the open and close center tags with \x3C

Wanda reported this for an older story, so it is happening at render time, not in submission processing. I've had two recent reports that the end of my Winter Event story was missing section breaks. I know one of them was reading a chapter a day, which makes me suspect it is a change to the rendering software iapproximately two or three days ago.

My very first chapter title in the same story also is misrendered, with an extra unbolded s appended to the end that is not in my original copy. I strongly suspect I would have seen that s when I first brought up my story after it published, so again, I suspect a change in the rendering introduced this in the recent past.

To me, this is a far more serious bug than almost anything else. That story is substantially worse without the section breaks. I struggle enough with my own stories without the site screwing them up. I strongly suggest everyone look at your published stories carefully right now.

I am considering pulling all of my stories down until this is fixed. Yes I know I will lose all my votes and everything. I don't know what else to do.

 

[SimonDoom]

You have to be patient with me, because my technical expertise is limited.

I have no idea what you are saying or complaining about.

I clicked on your stories link and scanned some of your stories and I didn't see what you were concerned about. Can you give us a link to show us?

In response to your suggestion to look over our stories, I did so.

I see no changes in my stories.

One of my habits as a writer here is that I use no special formatting. None. I don't use italics, I don't try to adjust margins, nothing. I keep it simple. When I want to separate one section from another I just put a string of asterisks between the sections. Those are still there. It works just fine.

I don't understand why you would pull your stories. What good would that do?

It seems to me like there are a number of authors in this forum who are constantly agitated because the site doesn't do everything exactly the way they want them to. My response is, get over yourselves. Accept that the site is what it is, and it's not going to change to accommodate you. Do your thing, stop worry about things, and enjoy yourselves. It's a choice. I don't understand the contrary choice. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. You are free to leave.

 

[iwatchus]

I use a centered ++++++ as a section break. I use hand embedded html.

The majority of them suddenly disappeared from my story Snow Fall In Love. I had two people tell me in the last two days that I appeared to be missing breaks, which made the story confusing, but I had not checked myself. Then @onehitwanda reported the missing breaks on an older story of hers (in StillStunned's amazing not AI thread). So I went and checked y story and most of them are gone now.

They were absolutely there in preview mode. Given the feedback I have had, I suspect they were there until a few days ago. I have to agree, the story becomes almost unreadable without them.

I have noticed two other issues with rendering now as well. One of which is absolutely new (block quotes are no longer italicized) and one I am pretty sure is new (an unbolded s had been appended to the title of the first chapter -- it is painfully obvious and I think I would have seen it previously. It is also not in the original document submitted.)

 

[TheLobster]

They borked the CSS used by story pages. The styling for <blockquote> is completely gone, for example, so the indent you're seeing is just the default styling your browser does.

I'm on mobile right now, so can't check what's up with <center>, but I suspect it's a CSS issue as well.

And yes, it's a bug. And no, it's not entitlement to expect the site to work like it says it should.

 

[Z_TheWriter]

You have to be patient with me, because my technical expertise is limited.

I have no idea what you are saying or complaining about.

I clicked on your stories link and scanned some of your stories and I didn't see what you were concerned about. Can you give us a link to show us?

In response to your suggestion to look over our stories, I did so.

I see no changes in my stories.

One of my habits as a writer here is that I use no special formatting. None. I don't use italics, I don't try to adjust margins, nothing. I keep it simple. When I want to separate one section from another I just put a string of asterisks between the sections. Those are still there. It works just fine.

I don't understand why you would pull your stories. What good would that do?

It seems to me like there are a number of authors in this forum who are constantly agitated because the site doesn't do everything exactly the way they want them to. My response is, get over yourselves. Accept that the site is what it is, and it's not going to change to accommodate you. Do your thing, stop worry about things, and enjoy yourselves. It's a choice. I don't understand the contrary choice. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. You are free to leave.

The point about being careful with special formatting because the site might break is valid. As a new author, I'm certainly now thinking I want to make sure things won't be unreadable or confusing if html formatting breaks.

I don't think it's unreasonable though, when the site offers formatting options, to then be a little upset if those don't work, and this creates problems. I personally probably wouldn't want to pull my stories over it, but then I also haven't experienced this problem, so that's easy to say.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Seems more likely to be an issue with displaying the contents of a story, of a file, than that something went into your stories and changed the contents.

If that's the case, it also seems like something that will simply clear itself up in a couple days since the underlying file would be unlikely to be actually changed.

EDIT: At various times the formatting of my left and right justified text messaging broke. They went back to normal eventually.

 

[crookedletter]

I would guess your stories have not been altered in the database; just in the way they're rendering. Which means whenever (if ever?) these issues are addressed, I would think your stories would be fixed. I don't see the upside to pulling your stories. Are these formatting concerns that essential to your stories' readability?

Your frustration is reasonable. But as far as what you can do, I would think just submit a bug report and hope for the best.

 

[EmilyMiller]

How are you coding them? I’ve taken a look at some of my multi page stories and dividers / centered titles all seem fine.

 

[AwkwardMD]

The point about being careful with special formatting because the site might break is valid. As a new author, I'm certainly now thinking I want to make sure things won't be unreadable or confusing if html formatting breaks.

I don't think it's unreasonable though, when the site offers formatting options, to then be a little upset if those don't work, and this creates problems. I personally probably wouldn't want to pull my stories over it, but then I also haven't experienced this problem, so that's easy to say.

It's maybe a bit of a stretch to say the site "offers formatting options." HTML, the primary language of web traffic, offers formatting and Lit allows some of it. There's plenty of room for the real problem to be a new rollout of Mozilla or Chromium and there are some jagged tears here and there.

 

[iwatchus]

They borked the CSS used by story pages. The styling for <blockquote> is completely gone, for example, so the indent you're seeing is just the default styling your browser does.

I'm on mobile right now, so can't check what's up with <center>, but I suspect it's a CSS issue as well.

And yes, it's a bug. And no, it's not entitlement to expect the site to work like it says it should.

The center bug is not css -- I suspected CSS for the block quote and am not all that concerned about that one.

The center big is rewriting the text, replace the open < on both open and close center tags with \x3C (I looked at the html being rendered), but only on some center tags.

 

[iwatchus]

How are you coding them? I’ve taken a look at some of my multi page stories and dividers / centered titles all seem fine.

I have been using

<center>+++++</center>

As my section breaks for a while. Some of them are simply gone in the rendered story. I believe this is new in the last few days. Wanda reported something similar for her older stories and she uses something similar for her section breaks.

 

[TheLobster]

The center big is rewriting the text, replace the open < on both open and close center tags with \x3C (I looked at the html being rendered), but only on some center tags.

Aww, shucks. This probably means it's a bug in the server-side processing of stories. Maybe they tweaked the algorithm for pagination or something, and introduced an escaping issue in the process.

 

[CalBishForNow]

I use a centered ++++++ as a section break. I use hand embedded html.

The majority of them suddenly disappeared from my story Snow Fall In Love. I had two people tell me in the last two days that I appeared to be missing breaks, which made the story confusing, but I had not checked myself. Then @onehitwanda reported the missing breaks on an older story of hers (in StillStunned's amazing not AI thread). So I went and checked y story and most of them are gone now.

They were absolutely there in preview mode. Given the feedback I have had, I suspect they were there until a few days ago. I have to agree, the story becomes almost unreadable without them.

I have noticed two other issues with rendering now as well. One of which is absolutely new (block quotes are no longer italicized) and one I am pretty sure is new (an unbolded s had been appended to the title of the first chapter -- it is painfully obvious and I think I would have seen it previously. It is also not in the original document submitted.)

Section breaks like this?

I took that screenshot two minutes ago on a PC with a Firefox browser. I opened the same story on my Droid phone and saw the same thing. I see two more of those on the first page, so I haven't paged through the whole thing to count all of them and see if it matches up with your expectations, but the first one I saw definitely isn't the only one.

I also see some blockquoted text, so that's working too for me. And I thought it was interesting that you have those +++++ section breaks, but you also seem to have "Chapter 2 The Trek" in bold text on the second page. Was that supposed to have a section break before it?

Maybe the problem has already been fixed. Maybe it only occurs on certain browsers/with certain settings. Odd.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I have been using


As my section breaks for a while. Some of them are simply gone in the rendered story. I believe this is new in the last few days. Wanda reported something similar for her older stories and she uses something similar for her section breaks.

Both that and the later <p align> approach have been deprecated in favor of CSS, but both used to work. I typically use the latter (I might go check some of my older stories too).

 

[YmaOHyd]

Does it appear on mobile correctly? I looked through my work briefly, and it all looks okay. I don't use <center> though. I use div align=right (I think, I copy and paste) for formatting texts and other electronic conversations. They don't seem to have broken. Haven't had a chance to look on desktop though.

 

[iwatchus]

Maybe the problem has already been fixed. Maybe it only occurs on certain browsers/with certain settings. Odd.

Maybe Manu fixed it. I did send him a note. That first one is back for me as well now (I had tried on both safari and firefox on Mac)

I did send a note to Manu. The s is still there in the chapter title, but that is much less concerning.

EDIT: not fixed after all.

 

[iwatchus]

Does it appear on mobile correctly? I looked through my work briefly, and it all looks okay. I don't use <center> though. I use div align=right (I think, I copy and paste) for formatting texts and other electronic conversations. They don't seem to have broken. Haven't had a chance to look on desktop though.

It was a server side issue (the rewrite the html on the way out, I guess), so I don't think it was browser/platform dependent.

 

[NotWise]

I had a centered and block quoted section in an older story, and the opening "<" on each is replaced by "\x3C", which is unicode for "<", as expressed in CSS. So the problem is probably in the style sheet.

 

[iwatchus]

Maybe Manu fixed it. I did send him a note. That first one is back for me as well now (I had tried on both safari and firefox on Mac)

I did send a note to Manu. The s is still there in the chapter title, but that is much less concerning.

Not fixed yet. It still happened for me on the other one I had noticed (page 7 right before the sentence that says Pop!)

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Hey, @ElectricBlue, AH-ers are attacking Lit! It's not me this time!

On the other hand, I don't know who I am anymore. I feel like Bart Simpson in that episode when the guru convinces everyone to do whatever they want...



Anyway, hurry up! That cheeky bugger, Simon, is trying to outfanboy you.

 

[iwatchus]

Okay, so more playing with it. The one on page 7 seems to happen consistently on first opening page 7, but the section break comes back on a reload. This seems to be consistent.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Okay, so more playing with it. The one on page 7 seems to happen consistently on first opening page 7, but the section break comes back on a reload. This seems to be consistent.

The section breaks on your story appear to me on first load. Could be a caching issue?

 

[iwatchus]

The section breaks on your story appear to me on first load. Could be a caching issue?

Some of them appear for me, but not all of them. I have tried on multiple browsers on multiple devices. I just retried again and still the page 7 one only appears only after a refresh.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Okay, so more playing with it. The one on page 7 seems to happen consistently on first opening page 7, but the section break comes back on a reload. This seems to be consistent.

I have this issue in reverse on a *bunch* of stories where an italicized word will remove the spaces before and after it. Page 1 will always look wrong. Following the site links to page 2 will fix it on page 2, and then reloading the page breaks it again.

That bug has been lingering in maybe 2 dozen of my stories for 5+ years

 

[AwkwardMD]

Okay, so more playing with it. The one on page 7 seems to happen consistently on first opening page 7, but the section break comes back on a reload. This seems to be consistent.

The fact that it appears correctly sometimes is *irrefutable proof* that the underlfying story/document/file is intact. The rest of it is just remdering.

EDIT: This is not to say that a rendering bug isn't a bug or that it might not be within Lit's capacity to fix. It is, and could be, but it’s also not the worst case scenario of compromising the important contents of our published works.