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RSS Broken

xmavericxmaveric Registered User new member
This is actually in reference to the main site RSS feed, not o the forums (if the forum even has one.)

I've tried the RSS today in a couple different readers, and they all say the feed is broken. Can you chex it out?

xmaveric on
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Posts

  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited July 2007
    For whatever it's worth: it's working fine for me.

    Aldo on
  • KreutzKreutz Blackwater Park, IARegistered User regular
    edited July 2007
    It works for me, but every few weeks I get the last two weeks of content in Thunderbird all over again. Probably PEBKAC but I figure I'll add it.

    Kreutz on
  • krelbelkrelbel Registered User new member
    edited July 2007
    From http://feedvalidator.org/check?url=http://www.penny-arcade.com/rss.xml

    Sorry

    This feed does not validate.

    line 32, column 31: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 1096-1098: invalid data (maybe a high-bit character?) [help]

    <title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
    ^
    In addition, this feed has issues that may cause problems for some users. We recommend fixing these issues.

    Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII" [help]


    line 32, column 23: title contains bad characters (8 occurrences) [help]

    <title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
    ^
    line 46, column 23: description contains bad characters (4 occurrences) [help]

    <description>The Tourn?n, Part Four</description>

    krelbel on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2007
    krelbel wrote: »
    From http://feedvalidator.org/check?url=http://www.penny-arcade.com/rss.xml

    Sorry

    This feed does not validate.

    line 32, column 31: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 1096-1098: invalid data (maybe a high-bit character?) [help]

    <title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
    ^
    In addition, this feed has issues that may cause problems for some users. We recommend fixing these issues.

    Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII" [help]


    line 32, column 23: title contains bad characters (8 occurrences) [help]

    <title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
    ^
    line 46, column 23: description contains bad characters (4 occurrences) [help]

    <description>The Tourn?n, Part Four</description>

    Pedantic ass validators are not the best thing to go by. It's marking a question mark. Try running any XHTML compliant website through the validator. Even though it may be 100% perfect, it'll still flag stuff.

    Surely it's a problem with the validator...

    MKR on
  • krelbelkrelbel Registered User new member
    edited August 2007
    MKR wrote: »
    krelbel wrote: »
    From http://feedvalidator.org/check?url=http://www.penny-arcade.com/rss.xml

    Sorry

    This feed does not validate.

    line 32, column 31: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 1096-1098: invalid data (maybe a high-bit character?) [help]

    <title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
    ^
    In addition, this feed has issues that may cause problems for some users. We recommend fixing these issues.

    Your feed appears to be encoded as "UTF-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII" [help]


    line 32, column 23: title contains bad characters (8 occurrences) [help]

    <title>News: The Tourn?n, Part Four</title>
    ^
    line 46, column 23: description contains bad characters (4 occurrences) [help]

    <description>The Tourn?n, Part Four</description>

    Pedantic ass validators are not the best thing to go by. It's marking a question mark. Try running any XHTML compliant website through the validator. Even though it may be 100% perfect, it'll still flag stuff.

    Surely it's a problem with the validator...

    Regardless of what the validator says, it's still broken on many readers (for example, NetNewsWire Lite for OS X). "Works for me" helps just as little as "Use a better/different/my reader".

    The help on that validator's site says that it might have something to do with the xml file's encoding differing from the webserver's xml file encoding. I know nothing of this, though.

    krelbel on
  • xmavericxmaveric Registered User new member
    edited August 2007
    The problem is the "é" in Tournemon. Because your server is reporting the encoding as ASCII, the agregators doen't know how to handle this character.

    So fix the encoding or strip the foreign characters from the feed.

    xmaveric on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2007
    xmaveric wrote: »
    The problem is the "é" in Tournemon. Because your server is reporting the encoding as ASCII, the agregators doen't know how to handle this character.

    So fix the encoding or strip the foreign characters from the feed.

    The type the server reports really shouldn't affect readers in this manner. It might cause it to show a question mark there, but it shouldn't cause any problems with parsing the feed.

    Besides, the proper type is declared _in_ the feed, which takes precedence.

    Edit: Wait, it's not declared in the feed. D:

    MKR on
  • xmavericxmaveric Registered User new member
    edited August 2007
    All I know is that it's not working on my aggregator, or on the built in IE7 reader, or by parsing it with Magpie. The Firefox reader can parse it just fine, it just puts in the ? characters when it doesn't understand.

    Isn't it interesting that Firefox, the standards-compliant browser that will usually cry foul over any non-strict coding will display the feed... but IE7, the browser that will display just about any piece of shit coded website out there, will not?


    By the way MKR, I checked out your blog. Good stuff.

    xmaveric on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2007
    xmaveric wrote: »
    All I know is that it's not working on my aggregator, or on the built in IE7 reader, or by parsing it with Magpie. The Firefox reader can parse it just fine, it just puts in the ? characters when it doesn't understand.

    Isn't it interesting that Firefox, the standards-compliant browser that will usually cry foul over any non-strict coding will display the feed... but IE7, the browser that will display just about any piece of shit coded website out there, will not?


    By the way MKR, I checked out your blog. Good stuff.

    Firefox will cry foul on a broken page, but it'll still fail gracefully by displaying it as best it can. :P

    I do agree that it would be a good idea to add the encoding to the feed, but you might want to e-mail the IE devs and those of your feed reader asking them to at least have their products try to display it. I'm sure google and mozilla aren't the only ones that know how to code past broken code. :)

    MKR on
  • xmavericxmaveric Registered User new member
    edited August 2007
    You, you know... PA could just FIX the broken feed.

    xmaveric on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2007
    xmaveric wrote: »
    You, you know... PA could just FIX the broken feed.

    You read my post, right?

    I said yes, it should be fixed, but it would still be a good idea for other readers to handle it in a more graceful fashion.

    Summary:
    1: The feed needs to be fixed.
    2: Readers really shouldn't fail completely when they encounter such a feed, because it's certainly not the only one out there.

    MKR on
  • krelbelkrelbel Registered User new member
    edited August 2007
    Adding the encoding to the feed wouldn't help, because standards-compliant readers will place precedence on the encoding that the web server's reporting anyway.

    Just one more example of standards getting in the way of things actually working...

    krelbel on
  • RamiusRamius Joined: July 19, 2000 Administrator, ClubPA admin
    edited August 2007
    MKR:
    1) the feedvalidator might be the least pedantic validator on the face of the planet.
    2) those things it was complaining about were NOT question marks. (but some browsers display unknown characters as such.)
    3) The character encoding declared in the feed does not take precedence.


    As for why IE chokes on it when FF does not, read this blog post, as well as the follow-up in the comments

    Ramius on
  • RamiusRamius Joined: July 19, 2000 Administrator, ClubPA admin
    edited August 2007
    so in short, xmaveric is right that someone should, "fix the encoding or strip the foreign characters from the feed."

    I can happily say that, because the someone in question is not me.

    Ramius on
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2007
    Agreed.

    The PA code guy should be fired for his negligence!

    <_<
    >_>

    This was already in my bug tracker. :wink:

    Älphämönkëy on
  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    edited August 2007
    Which is a huge piece of cardboard with "Site is really buggy!!!!" written on in red crayon

    Tube on
  • SeñorAmorSeñorAmor !!! Registered User regular
    edited August 2007
    The PA code guy should be fired for his negligence!

    Agreed.

    On a completely unrelated topic, where do I submit my resume? ;-)

    SeñorAmor on
  • jskangjskang Registered User regular
    edited October 2007
    I'm hoping this is the most appropriate place for this, but the main site feed appears to be broken again. Maybe.

    Firefox (2.0.0.8) fails to load the feed.

    Thunderbird (2.0.0.6) reports it as an invalid feed.

    Anyone else having problems?

    EDIT: The last time I had a feed update was on Monday or Tues. I definitely hadn't seen Wed.'s comic and news posts.

    jskang on
  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited October 2007
    Ditto, feed stopped working overnight.

    Aldo on
  • GhazgkullGhazgkull Registered User regular
    edited October 2007
    Yep. The feed appears to be totally busted.

    Ghazgkull on
  • jskangjskang Registered User regular
    edited October 2007
    I had emailed Gabe and Tycho last week. Hopefully, they've asked someone to take a look at it.

    jskang on
  • userqqqquserqqqq Registered User new member
    edited October 2007
    interestingly enough you know who CAN read the RSS? Google. I was checking my e-mail and noticed a comic title that was unfamiliar.. turns out it was 10 hours ago.. so yeah.. Google can read it where my Live Bookmarks have failed.
    parssie9.png

    userqqqq on
  • RamiusRamius Joined: July 19, 2000 Administrator, ClubPA admin
    edited October 2007
    Looks like there is an unescaped "&".

    I'm positive they've used "&" in their text in the past so I'm surprised their RSS code is breaking on it now. I'm not privy to that code though, so who knows.

    Ramius on
  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited October 2007
    I use google reader and have never had a problem with the RSS feed.

    wunderbar on
    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • RankenphileRankenphile Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited October 2007
    Still broken for me, using Firefox's live bookmarks, ver. 2.0.0.8

    Rankenphile on
    8406wWN.png
  • jskangjskang Registered User regular
    edited October 2007
    Hmm... So is this an RSS problem or a problem more specific to the particular aggregator (in this case FF and TB)?

    jskang on
  • GSMGSM Registered User regular
    edited October 2007
    The feed is not showing up in my PA FULL FEED on Yahoo Pipes. Now I'm only getting the podcasts, and my special SE++ Comic Thread extractor. But I guess that's why I put in the redundant sources, so I still know when there's a new comic, at least.

    GSM on
    We'll get back there someday.
  • kdiddy13kdiddy13 Registered User new member
    edited November 2007
    Using Firefox (2.0.0.9 and 2.0.0.8) in two separate locations, and the feed isn't working in either. Any news on whether this is being looked at, or should I just give up on it and find a different way to get the feed?

    kdiddy13 on
  • GSMGSM Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    kdiddy13 wrote: »
    Using Firefox (2.0.0.9 and 2.0.0.8) in two separate locations, and the feed isn't working in either. Any news on whether this is being looked at, or should I just give up on it and find a different way to get the feed?

    I believe it will go away once the unescaped ampersand fall off the end of the feed. At least that's what happened last time.

    GSM on
    We'll get back there someday.
  • juicejuicejuicejuice Registered User new member
    edited November 2007
    Yeah I vote for no more ampersands to be used in the feeds :P

    juicejuice on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    I'm assuming they use some sort of automatic postaamajig. The script could handle escapes. :P

    MKR on
  • RohaqRohaq UKRegistered User regular
    edited November 2007
    I'm getting nothing but the most recent entry on the feed on my reader, which is the Wizz RSS reader extension for Firefox.

    Rohaq on
  • GhazgkullGhazgkull Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    I'm confused.

    In this thread juicejuice clearly explained that the problem is an invalid character in the RSS feed. Rather than reporting the problem to someone who can fix this simple mistake, the forum admin locked the thread saying he thinks it has "nothing to do with us".

    I'm not trying to cause trouble, but isn't this forum for reporting bugs and user issues with the Penny Arcade website? The RSS feed has been broken for a week because it contains an error and users have reported the problem along with a simple explanation of how to fix it (you need to use "&" to put an ampersand in an RSS feed).

    What gives?

    Ghazgkull on
  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    The admins of this forum can't fix the rest of the site. That's what Khoo does. Khoo usually isn't on the forums, but he's aware of this problem. There's really no point in having multiple threads on the subject, especially not in Tube's Circus.

    Aldo on
  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    edited November 2007
    Ghazgkull wrote: »
    I'm confused.

    In this thread juicejuice clearly explained that the problem is an invalid character in the RSS feed. Rather than reporting the problem to someone who can fix this simple mistake, the forum admin locked the thread saying he thinks it has "nothing to do with us".

    I'm not trying to cause trouble, but isn't this forum for reporting bugs and user issues with the Penny Arcade website? The RSS feed has been broken for a week because it contains an error and users have reported the problem along with a simple explanation of how to fix it (you need to use "&" to put an ampersand in an RSS feed).

    What gives?

    It has nothing to do with us. There's nothing we can do about it. We only deal with the forums. This thread might allow the front page admins to see and fix the problem, so we leave it here, but it has nothing to do with us. We cannot fix it.

    Tube on
  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    edited November 2007
    trust me that there is no one who finds this more vexatious than myself and ramius.

    Tube on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    It seems like the simplest solution is to have the posting system automatically fix problematic characters, but I don't know how the PA backend works. I imagine it involves rituals and such.

    MKR on
  • GhazgkullGhazgkull Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    It has nothing to do with us. There's nothing we can do about it. We only deal with the forums. This thread might allow the front page admins to see and fix the problem, so we leave it here, but it has nothing to do with us. We cannot fix it.

    I see. I guess as someone who just visits this forum occasionally, it's not obvious that this is just for bugs in the PA forums themselves (and not for the entire site).

    So how are we supposed to report problems with the site itself? At the very least, it seems like you guys (the forum admins) should have a way of contacting the people who run the site when it's broken.

    Ghazgkull on
  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    Tycho and Gabe's e-mail addresses are somewhere on the front page, you know. :? Don't know about Khoo's, though.

    Aldo on
  • GhazgkullGhazgkull Registered User regular
    edited November 2007
    Aldo wrote: »
    Tycho and Gabe's e-mail addresses are somewhere on the front page, you know. :? Don't know about Khoo's, though.

    Yeah, I know. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sent them mail as soon as the RSS feed died.

    But we all also know the volume of email they get... and besides, my understanding is that they pay people to make sure the site runs. They shouldn't be the ones who have to worry about fixing a problem like this.

    Ghazgkull on
This discussion has been closed.