Textpad editing or FP uploading corrupts Tickers2?

[UnkaBobby]

I feel like I've fallen through the rabbit-hole here. This makes no sense at all.

1. Tickers work fine as delivered and FTP'd w/FTP client.

2. Tickers yield TOO "LITTLE TICKER ELEMENTS (3 min)" if *either*:
(a) Edited with Textpad and uploaded with FTP client -or-
(b) Uploaded with Frontpage no matter how edited.

E.g.:

Edit CONFIG.XML w/Frontpage, and upload w/FTP client, works great.

Edit CONFIG.XML w/Frontpage and upload w/Frontpage: above error.

Edit CONFIG.XML w/Textpad and upload w/FTP client: above error.

Edit CONFIG.XML w/Notepad and upload w/FTP client: works great.

This seems nuts! I've checked Textpad config: Not wordwrapping, set to edit straight text simply, ANSI/PC encoding...


Any ideas would be very appreciated!
--Bobby
<mailman@NIXTHISvirtualfulfillmentarts.com>

[klj2000]

It's just my personal thought but I wouldn't use frontpage for anything other then to edit simple html or asp or what ever other formats it allows in itself. To me you best editing tools would be other notepad or textpad. I don't know anything about textpad but if it has the option to save your files in UTF-8 I think that would solve your issue then with textpad. Uploading with frontpage or dreamweaver are not really setup for uploading php, xml etc type files. Although in some cases they do wowrk they don't have the detection like most ftp clients have for detemining what file type needs to be uploading in which format. I myself would check textpad for UTF-8 and use this and upload using your ftp client then.

[RandyS]

Hi,

I've found the same thing. I use UltraEdit for editing my config.xml, upload with Dreamweaver via FTP and it works.

However, I would rather use Dreamweaver to edit the XML. Its more convenient since I'm working on the website with Dreamweaver. But Dreamweaver messes up the XML. As soon as I save it add blank lines. CRLFs? The Flash ticker then will not load properly.

TIA,
RandyS

[klj2000]

Well for me to set some of these things up in dreamweaver is ok but I use a text editor still to do the final editing on most of these file types like xml, php etc. just to make sure no extra characters are added. This is one reason Darren posts that Textpad is a good editor for these files. I think Dreamweaver is a great program but for some of the finer details like for these xml files in your case I would use a good text editor. There faster to load and won't effect dreamweaver at all doing so. Now the last thing is the uploading useing other Dreamweaver or Frontpage. Even on Darrens site or in some of his tutorials in the downloads state not to use one of these programs for uploading. The best way really for uploading is a good ftp client that will recognize the file type and upload it in the correct file format that it needs. I know this all sounds like a lot of extra work but if you think about it when you run into these errors what's really a bigger pain. Just my thought on this.

[RandyS]

I guess its just the nature of the beast. Two steps forward, one step back as they say. Well UltraEdit/Dreamweaver works so I guess I'll stick with that combo.

Thanks,
RandyS

[UnkaBobby]

Well for me to set some of these things up in dreamweaver is ok but I use a text editor still to do the final editing on most of these file types like xml, php etc. just to make sure no extra characters are added. This is one reason Darren posts that Textpad is a good editor for these files. I think Dreamweaver is a great program but for some of the finer details like for these xml files in your case I would use a good text editor. There faster to load and won't effect dreamweaver at all doing so. Now the last thing is the uploading useing other Dreamweaver or Frontpage. Even on Darrens site or in some of his tutorials in the downloads state not to use one of these programs for uploading. The best way really for uploading is a good ftp client that will recognize the file type and upload it in the correct file format that it needs. I know this all sounds like a lot of extra work but if you think about it when you run into these errors what's really a bigger pain. Just my thought on this.


KLJ2000 and Randy5: Thank you for the thoughts -- it's refreshing to see some folks actually kick a specific issue around a little, even when it's not a problem for them! :)

I agree of course about not using a WYSIWYG package like Frontpage or Dreamweaver for editing a CONFIG.XML file, I included the Frontpage test results just as comparison.

But I felt the issue was a quirk worth addressing here specifically because Darren recommends using TextPad in a number of places around here. I've used it for years and love it largely because of it's stripped-down treatment of straight ASCII text files. I'd never known it to add any problematic encoding/etc., and none of the recommendations here for using TextPad to edit config files for these scripts mentioned anything about requiring one to set UTF-8 encoding...

The illions of tools one must keep at hand these days makes me harken fondly back to the days of EMACS, and having to now make Notepad part of my shortcut toolbox, specifically just for editing this one script's config file regularly, seemed like a surprising inelegance from Darren, given that he pimps TextPad, and that I've always found TextPad to work well for editing native, stickler file formats.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll try setting up a "document type" of XML in TextPad that's forced to use UTF-8.


Happy Autumn!
Bobby