LibriVox Forum

Hello, I meant to ask this long ago: when I enter a correct title which contains an apostrophe (and many titles do), I get the following message:

An Error Was Encountered

The URI you submitted has disallowed characters.

*


However, if I enter the same title without the apostrophe, it says:

No results found

I often don't remember the author's name, so I can't search by author. I don't know if this was always a problem, or whether it is relatively new, and what to to about it?

* And shouldn't it read URL?

Enter? Where/how? In the search form - which one: standard/advanced? As a url directly in your browser?
Do you have an example that doesn't work to illustrate what you mean?

In general and for every search form, it is never a good idea to enter all the information you have. Even the smallest typo or discrepancy will lead to an empty result. If you just use a single word, the result will be better.

And as to the URI/URL, wikipedia says:

In computing, a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string of characters used to identify the name of a resource. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network, typically the World Wide Web, using specific protocols. Schemes specifying a concrete syntax and associated protocols define each URI. The most common form of URI is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), frequently referred to informally as a web address. More rarely seen in usage is the Uniform Resource Name (URN), which was designed to complement URLs by providing a mechanism for the identification of resources in particular namespaces.

The search mask (standard) on the LV home page. Enter The bishop's secret and you'll get the error message. Enter The bishops secret and you'll get no result.

Learning something new every day, I had never heard of an URI.

I have tried to use the url escape character for the apostrophe - %20 - in the search; the apostrophe is recognised, but it still gives the same error message. It seems that the way the search query is encoded and then handed over to the search engine cannot handle special characters like that. Nothing to be done since we are not able to touch the code at this point, I'm afraid.

The problem is solved by simply leaving out the apostrophe and everything that comes behind it. Searching for "bishop secret" turns up the result that you were looking for.

Hope this helps. Sorry there is no solution, just a workaround.

Oh well, we live and we learn. Thank you.

Acutely frustrating, I agree. Definitely one to add to the list for future fixes .

As a general rule, it's always worth searching for part of a title.

Ruth

Thanks, Ruth, but sometimes, I just don't want to scroll through several pages containing e.g. the word 'mother', but want to get the result directly.

Oh, this is very odd. I have just searched for The Bishop's and it showed:

The Bishop's Apron
The Bishop's Secret
In the Bishop's Carriage

Is this, I wonder, a difference in the apostrophes used in different text-encoding or maybe even different language keyboards? I do not know, but it certainly seems a possibility. I have Unicode selected (View | Text Encoding in Firefox).

Ruth

That could be a possibility.

I don't think the "view | text encoding" will make a difference, because it should only affect how you see a website, not how you enter anything. I have "unicode" selected there too, and I get the same error message as Claudia. I am on a Japanese keyboard though, so maybe my ' is different somehow?

Well no - I don't think so
When Smike posted I went to the catalogue and searched for Grimm's - and was astonshed to get 2 valid results http://librivox.org/grimms-fairy-tales-version-2-by-jacob-wilhelm-grimm/ http://librivox.org/grimms-fairy-tales-retold-in-one-syllable-words-by-jacob-wilhelm-grimm/ .

But when I tried again I got the error message and have no idea why.
And it's just worked again and again and again now

Anne

It certainly is odd. If I copy the Ruthie's results, it works. If I enter the ' from my keyboard, I get the error message.

There has to be an answer to this... Could it be this?

A wordpress support forum wrote:The thing is, you are searching for: "mur d'escalade" and you should be searching for: "mur d’escalade". In other words, the difference is in the apostrophe. The apostrophe (’) looks the same as a closing single quotation mark (') and our plugin noticed the difference.

ETA This page gives further information: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/apostrophe.html

Ruth

It seems like an engine glitch:

- tried with Ruth's responses from above: error
- replaced that apostrophe with my own: error
- replaced that apostrophe with the "real" apostrophe from the wordpress quote: no results
- replaced again with my own apostrophe: search successful.



something somewhere is fickle and does what it wants...

That certainly is mysterious. I don't have the wordpress ', I would have to open office and type the title there to get that sort of '.

I guess I'll just search with google, entering the title and librivox, that gets the wanted result.

I typically just use google in this situation. Try typing this into google's search bar:

site:librivox.org bishop's secret

or

site:librivox.org grimm's