Problem with Discourse in Safari on Mac

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1

By the way, am I the only one facing trouble when selecting text and quoting somebody in Safari on this site?

It seems to mess up the quote template by changing the last double quote on the first line to smart quotes. You can see it in this comment I left on another post. I could fix it by switching it back to straight quotes, but I’m leaving it so people can see what I’m talking about.

(I’m running Safari 18.4 in Mac OS 15.4)

2

Seems to work for me. Tried on Safari 18.4 and Firefox 137.0.1.

Could this be some autocorrect feature in your macOS/Safari configuration?

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Coincidentally, I just posted in another thread about Substitutions. In Safari, is Edit > Substitutions > Smart Quotes enabled? (That wouldn’t explain why it’s only the final double quote, but it might be related.)

4

I just ran a quick test with that option (I had it turned off), and that reproduced the bug. So I think we now know the cause.

Now, is the fault Apple, Discourse or something else? But without the Discourse (and maybe also Safari) source code, I have no way of knowing.

If you want to keep pursuing this, I’d send a bug report to both and see if either company can fix it.

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Thanks. I had already filed a bug report to Discourse. I never bother trying to report bugs to Apple anymore because 1. They make it difficult. 2. Even when I’ve tried I’ve never had a single positive experience to make me think I’m doing anything other than wasting my time.

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I have noticed (and fixed) that in a few of your posts. I haven’t seen anyone else suffering from it. I was thinking it was an odd bug, but hadn’t gotten as far as asking about it yet.

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I understand completely. Over the past 20 years, I’ve only gotten a response to one bug report. But I file them anyway because:

  • If it’s rare, then maybe nobody else reported it. They can’t fix something they don’t know about. And if it’s rare, more reports will increase the bug’s priority.
  • My report means that they were informed. I can’t make them do anything, but at least the truth is where it belongs.
  • I have seen many of my bugs fixed in subsequent releases, even though nobody ever contacted me (or even closed the bug report). Was my report responsible? I have no way of knowing, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
8

Yeah, I filed three bugs against Photos while writing my last article. The first was a reproducible crash, the second was an embarrassing cosmetic issue with dragging, and the final one was a violation of the Apple Style Guide. If I don’t say something about that last one, no one else will.

I tend to think that this problem with the posts getting a curly quote is some unusual setting or third-party utility.

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I get that. I tend to agree. If they can’t be bothered to acknowledge or update you on your report, why should you bother carrying their water? At the very least it would just be decent behavior. With $200B+ in the bank, they can afford that minor trouble.

That said, in the end I often do just report all the same. Perhaps naively so but ultimately I do feel like @shamino that this way “at least the truth is where it belongs”. I guess I’m a sucker. :wink: