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simoncn · 09-01-2015, 21:52

(09-01-2015 18:43)Andre Gosselin Wrote: I realize that, when creating this message, I can see two offending characters (originally shown in the PDF as a copyright symbol, and a 'P' inside a circle). But when pasting to a COMMENT tag using mp3tag, foobar or mediamonkey, only the second one is "hinted" at in the software UI. The same is true once my message is previewed: the first illegal character goes unnoticed.

Hunting for illegal characters introduced by a cut&paste operation can thus quickly become really troublesome. Cutting & pasting inside the comments tag appears such a natural thing to do (at least for me) that I risk the suggestion that, for this tag only, illegal characters should be reported in the log, but stripped so that the tag contents can be safely and usefully passed to the control point.

Thanks for your help

I have reproduced the problem using the PDF file you uploaded. I have also tried copying and pasting text from some of my own booklet PDF files. These don't create the same problem with illegal characters because the pasted text contains C in place of the © symbol and P in place of the ℗ symbol.

My conclusions are:

1) This 0x01 problem is relatively unusual because it occurs only with faulty PDF files

2) When this 0x01 problem does occur, there is no simple or convenient way for the user to locate the 0x01 character and remove it

3) Because the position of the 0x01 character can't be located easily, MinimServer should convert the illegal tag to a legal format instead of ignoring it

4) It would be helpful for MinimServer to show the user where the 0x01 character is in the tag value so that the user can fix it with a tag editor

My proposed solution is to add code to replace all illegal characters (not just 0x01) in all tag values (not just COMMENT) with a legal substitute such as the Unicode replacement character � (U+FFFD). The replacement would be internal to MinimServer and the file tags would not be modified.

When the user is viewing the tag value in a control point, the replacement character will be visible and this will show the user that the tag value contains an illegal character as well as identifying the exact position of the illegal character.