topic Re: Colons being rendered in HTML in All Things Community

Colons being rendered in HTML

Rick_SAS — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 16:00:24 GMT

A week or two ago I noticed that the editor is incorrectly rendering the colon. On the next line I will type the word "DATA" followed by a colon, like so

DATA&colon; How is the colon rendered?

As you can see, there is a problem. It only seems to occur for some words...maybe SAS keywords?

QUESTION: This is 1.

ANSWER: This is 2.

PROC: This is 3.

DO: This is 4.

RUN: This is 5.

I don't know what's happening.

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

RW9 — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 16:45:16 GMT

I have noticed this on peoples posts, and wondered where it came from. My suggestion would be, if you want to put code in the post use either {i} - general code, or the SAS run icon from the toolbar above the post rather than putting it into plain text in the post.

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

Rick_SAS — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:41:31 GMT

Any update on this from a community administrator such as @ChrisHemedinger? Has this been reported?

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

ChrisHemedinger — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:49:45 GMT

I have seen this once or twice myself. Now that I see other people are affected, I'll report it. Our platform received a minor upgrade last week and I think this was introduced then.

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

ChrisHemedinger — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 16:51:19 GMT

Turns out that this is special to the combination of "data" followed by a colon. It's insurance against a potential web vulnerability. I don't have more details (guessing a javascript/JSON nuance), but apparently this behavior is not new and has been around for a long time. When you see it in your own messages, the only option is to reword or use different punctuation. May I suggest the interrobang?

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

FreelanceReinh — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 19:39:23 GMT

For me, the following trick seemed to be working: Write the colon in a different font than the word "data."

So, if "data" is written in the default font (Arial, I think) and the colon is written in Helvetica (which is very similar to Arial, please note that I've written "Helvetica" in this font), the "&colon" effect does not occur.

Test:

all in default font: data&colon;

all in Helvetica: data&colon;

"data" in default font, colon in Helvetica: data:

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

ChrisHemedinger — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 19:46:31 GMT

Creative workaround! I can see why that works as a loophole, but congrats for figuring that out!

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

FreelanceReinh — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 20:43:11 GMT

Thanks!

One more test:

"data" in default font, colon in Arial (!): data:

Edit: It works! So, no need to scroll down to Helvetica any longer! 🙂

Re: Colons being rendered in HTML

Rick_SAS — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 20:53:22 GMT

Use bold (CTRL+B), which can be typed by using a keyboard shortcut:

Bold data:

Italics (CTRL+I) also works, but is harder to see.