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

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! :wink:

Not sure if this is mentioned, but the trick is that after you do your
find/replace, you must choose FILE... SAVE AS... and make certain that
SAVE AS TYPE: says "All Files", and that ENCODING: says "UTF-8". Also,
the file name must be identical to the one you received, with .xml on
the end.

Mike

From: pbmnoot [mailto:bbrunec296@rogers.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 11:33 PM
To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [mepbmlist] AOL xmls (AWOL xml's...??)

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?)

~?

···

-----Original Message-----

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! :wink:

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

···

--- In mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com, "pbmnoot" <bbrunec296@r...> wrote:

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

Colin

seconded

···

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

Hint ... don't use AOL :slight_smile: 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/

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!)

Clint, I hope it's ok to post this now - I know you're
still testing it, but I also know you're busy, and
this seems an appropriate time to post it.

It isn't hard! The guide is long because the first
time you try it, you're dealing with a bunch of
strange characters, so I've gone through each step in
detail. Try it the first time with the guide in hand,
and after that, you can do the corrections in less
than ten seconds.

Dan

How to Edit your AOL-xml Files for Palantir

If you also use Automagic, save directly from AOL to
your Automagic folder now. Automagic loads differently
from Palantir, and it can read the AOL version but
will not read the version you edit.

Keep your original AOL file in your email until you
have everything working; if you encounter trouble, you
can try again.

1) Download the XML file to your computer and open it
with Wordpad. (Open the Wordpad program, then find
your xml file � select �All Files� to see it).

2) You�ll see a series of square boxes � they
represent symbols that Wordpad can�t display � and,
between them, letters. If you look carefully, you�ll
see the letters actually spell words (�Character,�
�Nation,� etc).

3) At the very beginning of the file, before the first
box, use the numeric keypad to enter two special
characters.
To do this, hold down the �Alt� key, then type in on
the numeric keypad
"0254". Then let up Alt. You should see a �P� shaped
character.

4) Hold down Alt again and type "0255". This time you
should get a lower case Y with two dots over it.

5) You now need to remove three linefeeds and you�re
done. Linefeeds are symbols that insert space into the
file, added by AOL. They appear as four squares in a
row.

6) The first is in a line, after a blank section, that
looks like this
        .<.E.c.o.n.o.m.y.>
       except that the periods are shown as square
boxes.

7) Go to the very beginning of the line, before the
first box, then press Backspace four times. You�ve
just removed one of the linefeeds.

8) Now find the other line after a blank section:
              .<.P.o.p.C.e.n.t.e.r.s.>
              And do the same thing: from the
beginning of the line, press Backspace four times.

9) Finally, go to the very end of the file (the Page
Down key will get you there) and press Backspace four
times.

10) Save the file.

Palantir can now read it, and so can Internet
Explorer. Wordpad can�t open it any longer, so if you
need to start over, reload your original file from AOL.

···

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com

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

···

--- In mepbmlist@yahoogroups.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!)

Thanks Dan for your timely information. Attention Clint: This procedure
just worked excellently for 2 AOL allied files on my crappy Win98 machine.
It's a heck of a lot faster than Replacing the spaces too, especially as I
can find the places for the backspaces very easily (they're new lines
starting on the left, so you don't have to wander around searching the
unreadable text!).

Cheers,

Brad Brunet

···

----- Original Message -----
From: "D N" <nanooknw@yahoo.com>
To: <mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [mepbmlist] Re: AOL xmls (AWOL xml's...??)

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!)

Clint, I hope it's ok to post this now - I know you're
still testing it, but I also know you're busy, and
this seems an appropriate time to post it.

It isn't hard! The guide is long because the first
time you try it, you're dealing with a bunch of
strange characters, so I've gone through each step in
detail. Try it the first time with the guide in hand,
and after that, you can do the corrections in less
than ten seconds.

Dan

How to Edit your AOL-xml Files for Palantir

If you also use Automagic, save directly from AOL to
your Automagic folder now. Automagic loads differently
from Palantir, and it can read the AOL version but
will not read the version you edit.

Keep your original AOL file in your email until you
have everything working; if you encounter trouble, you
can try again.

1) Download the XML file to your computer and open it
with Wordpad. (Open the Wordpad program, then find
your xml file - select "All Files" to see it).

2) You'll see a series of square boxes - they
represent symbols that Wordpad can't display - and,
between them, letters. If you look carefully, you'll
see the letters actually spell words ("Character,"
"Nation," etc).

3) At the very beginning of the file, before the first
box, use the numeric keypad to enter two special
characters.
To do this, hold down the "Alt" key, then type in on
the numeric keypad
"0254". Then let up Alt. You should see a "P" shaped
character.

4) Hold down Alt again and type "0255". This time you
should get a lower case Y with two dots over it.

5) You now need to remove three linefeeds and you're
done. Linefeeds are symbols that insert space into the
file, added by AOL. They appear as four squares in a
row.

6) The first is in a line, after a blank section, that
looks like this
        .<.E.c.o.n.o.m.y.>
       except that the periods are shown as square
boxes.

7) Go to the very beginning of the line, before the
first box, then press Backspace four times. You've
just removed one of the linefeeds.

8) Now find the other line after a blank section:
              .<.P.o.p.C.e.n.t.e.r.s.>
              And do the same thing: from the
beginning of the line, press Backspace four times.

9) Finally, go to the very end of the file (the Page
Down key will get you there) and press Backspace four
times.

10) Save the file.

Palantir can now read it, and so can Internet
Explorer. Wordpad can't open it any longer, so if you
need to start over, reload your original file from AOL.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com

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/

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

Russ
Part-Time AOL'er

···

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Jeffries" <mark@markjeffries.net>
To: <mepbmlist@yahoogroups.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@timewyrm.co.uk>
To: <mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2003 5:54 PM
Subject: [mepbmlist] Re: AOL xmls (AWOL xml's...??)

> Hint ... don't use AOL :slight_smile: 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/