[BitPim-devel] RE: [BitPim-user] Help: lost response

[Simon C]

Change Jose's name to not use an accent. This issue is
explained many times over in the list archives.

Browsers let the user choose the encoding type, could we add an option to do
something similar and set the default encoding type to get past this issue
(for the short term), that way we don't have to know how the phone is
configured.
I'd also explicitly convert all strings to unicode when reading/writing to
the database.

Simon

[Roger Binns]

Post by Simon C
Browsers let the user choose the encoding type, could we add an option to do
something similar and set the default encoding type to get past this issue
(for the short term), that way we don't have to know how the phone is
configured.

But it is the phone that has the encoding. The user has no way of
knowing
what the encoding is.

Post by Simon C
I'd also explicitly convert all strings to unicode when
reading/writing to
the database.

They are. It is at that point that the exceptions currently happen
since the
strings aren't already in unicode (or ascii). Each phone module needs
to be
updated to convert from unicode to their scheme on writing and vice
versa
on reading.

I have been looking for a good conversion database. For example if e
with
an accent is not supported by the phone encoding then it should be
converted
to a plain e. Unfortunately the last time I checked the Python code
just
removed characters. Jośe should become Jose not Joe.

Ṝṍḡḝṝ

[Simon C]

Post by Roger Binns
I have been looking for a good conversion database. For
example if e with an accent is not supported by the phone
encoding then it should be converted to a plain e.
Unfortunately the last time I checked the Python code just
removed characters. Jose should become Jose not Joe.
?????

Exactly, I don't think there is an answer to this that is totally
satisfactory, but I think we should do something short term to relieve this
problem even if it is not a total fix. I suspect that latin-1 will cover
most phones, savvy users can change this at their own risk.

We should add an exception handler at a minimum.

Simon

[Roger Binns]

Post by Simon C

?????

Those of you reading on MacOS would have been amused. Those reading
on Windows should know that Microsoft left many glyphs out of their
fonts!

Post by Simon C
Exactly, I don't think there is an answer to this that is totally
satisfactory, but I think we should do something short term to relieve this
problem even if it is not a total fix. I suspect that latin-1 will cover
most phones, savvy users can change this at their own risk.

That is the programming equivalent of sweeping it under the
rug. IMO it is way better sitting there in front of all of
us until someone fixes it properly.

Post by Simon C
We should add an exception handler at a minimum.

I can add a handler like for several other exceptions. The
only problem is that it will catch all exceptions of this
type and you'll lose the traceback. That I also think is a
bad idea.

BTW the version number is 0.8 for a reason :-)

Roger

[Simon C]

Post by Roger Binns

Post by Simon C
We should add an exception handler at a minimum.

I can add a handler like for several other exceptions. The
only problem is that it will catch all exceptions of this
type and you'll lose the traceback. That I also think is a bad idea.

I was thinking of something like "Phonebook entry "XYZ" cannot be
read/written to the phone because it contains funny characters", this should
provide traceback along with the logs, we could also allow entries that were
OK to be read/written. This should get us to 0.9 ;)
I'm trying to tink of a way to make things a little easier for the users
while we figure out how to fix it.

Post by Roger Binns
BTW the version number is 0.8 for a reason :-)

If we were a well know software giant we would be at 3.11 already.

Simon

[Roger Binns]

Post by Simon C
I'm trying to tink of a way to make things a little easier for the users
while we figure out how to fix it.

We know how to fix it. The fix is pretty easy, but requires code in
every phone model.

Roger