EPC adds whitespace to event title/desc

[cepheid]

Brian,

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but EPC has been adding a trailing space to every event title and description for as long as I've been using it. This doesn't affect viewability, but it is annoying in two minor regards:

1) It artificially inflates the calendar database filesize by 2 characters for every event... small, but it does add up for calendars with a lot of unique events.
2) It confuses the auto-complete mechanism of Firefox/Safari, because they store the event titles with and without the extra space separately.

It's not a huge issue, of course, but it does seem unnecessary... is the extra trailing space intentional, or is it just a minor bug that hasn't yet been fixed?

Thanks. :)

[Brian]

Are you using an HTML editor?

[cepheid]

Are you using an HTML editor?No, I'm just using the EPC web interface to enter text. I manually enter a title and a description. I submit the entry. If I then go to edit the entry, there is an extra space at the end of the title and another at the end of the event description.

I just added a test event to the Online Demo (see July 23). An extra space was added to the title, although no extra space was added to the description... I think it may be because you are using a "fancy" WYSIWYG description editor, whereas I use the super-plain text entry box (no WYSIWYG editor) - it seems the plain one injects the space. (This is certainly true in the title box.)

[Brian]

The calendar doesn't inject the spaces. There is actually code to remove some of them if the HTML editor adds them or extra line breaks at the end. But I think (it was a long, long time ago), the last one was left for a reason.

[cepheid]

The calendar doesn't inject the spaces.Then where are they coming from? It's not my web browser... the same thing happens whether I use Safari, Firefox, or Internet Explorer (on either Mac, Linux, or Windows). This only happens with EPC, as well - no other web forms I fill out end up with extra spaces.

Again, it's fairly minor... but it seems to me that something within the calendar is causing the space. The event title should be proof of that, since there's no WYSIWYG editor used on event titles.

Try adding a test event to the Online Demo, as I did, and hopefully you'll see what I mean. (The extra space won't be visible when you view the HTML, since HTML is fairly space-neutral. If you go back to edit the new event, you'll see the extra space at the end of the title.)

You're saying the spaces may be there deliberately?

[Brian]

I'm aware of what you are referring to, but it's been over three years since this was programmed and I just don't remember why. I would have to reverse-engineer my code to figure it out.

And the calendar doesn't inject the spaces. It's a byproduct of another process.

[cepheid]

Ah, OK. I guess I was just referring to everything as "the calendar," but clearly there's more under the hood. :)

Certainly it's minor... I just thought I'd report it in case it was easy to fix, since it's a bit of an annoyance, but I can live with it (since I can't live without EPC, that's for sure!). If you get around to it, wonderful; if not, oh well. :)

Thanks Brian.