Links Truncated

[kb2jaq]

I recieved a tweet that had a bit.ly link in it... The link was shortened by a few characters ( ... ) but when clicking on the link in gwibber... It sent me to the shortened address.

Here is the tweet as viewed at twitter.com:
NHL Devils
N.J. Devil is the only @NHL mascot left in ESPN's Mascot Madness - please RT and vote if you love hockey. http://bit.ly/aIChT2

But viewed in gwibber the end of the link was shortened to http://bit.ly/a
Which took me to apple.com.

Pete

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

On 03/24/2010 09:20 PM, kb2jaq wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> I recieved a tweet that had a bit.ly link in it... The link was
> shortened by a few characters ( ... ) but when clicking on the link in
> gwibber... It sent me to the shortened address.
>
> Here is the tweet as viewed at twitter.com:
> NHL Devils
> N.J. Devil is the only @NHL mascot left in ESPN's Mascot Madness - please RT and vote if you love hockey. http://bit.ly/aIChT2
>
> But viewed in gwibber the end of the link was shortened to http://bit.ly/a
> Which took me to apple.com.
>
> Pete
>
> ** Affects: gwibber
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
Could it have happened when copy and pasted on the blog? (not sure if
that is a person or a bot type thing)

  status incomplete

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

"How can i get lost, if i have no where to go"
    -- Metallica from Unforgiven III

[kb2jaq (kb2jaq)]

The link is fine from from the original source on Twitter and also fine when re-tweeted' and clicked via twitter.com.
The problem is the removal of the last few characters by gwibber... which was caused by the addition ( by twitter ) of the
"RT @" tag.
I'm guessing gwibber is sticking to the 140 character limit, even though "RT @" tags are not counted as such by twitter ?

Pete

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Thanks for the bug report. Please answer these questions:

* Is this reproducible?
* If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[koushikt (koushikt)]

This bug is reproducible. When some one re tweets some message which is close to 140 chars through the new-style retweet feature supported by twitter web client and many other desktop client. Gwibber doesnt interpret to right. Since Gwibber still uses only the old school RT, Gwibber adds a "RT @username" before the message increasing the tweet length and hence truncating the last few letters.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

in that case gwibber cant do any thing. other twitter clients do the same

[rafael (bomber-man)]

Are you sure?
It seems a Gwibber bug because the tweet is normal in the web client and broken on Gwibber

[Patrick Calhoun (phineas42)]

Here's a possible solution to the bug. It seems that most twitter clients place the original tweet into the stream, instead of the retweet; they simply cite the user that did the retweeting.

Note: in the attached change to ui/templates/base.mako I use the full web url of the retweeter's feed. This should probably be changed to a link within gwibber to that user's stream.

[Patrick Calhoun (phineas42)]

I just recalled that often times a user will modify a RT. In those cases, a slightly more complex solution will be required.

[Patrick Calhoun (phineas42)]

And in response to myself in post #9 -- I believe that the concern is a non-issue. I think that modifying a message in the retweet counts as a whole new tweet, and no special handling will be required.

[Martinique (martinique)]

This bug is caused by the lack of native retweet support, which is discussed in other bug reports such as:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/gwibber/+bug/500927
https://bugs.launchpad.net/gwibber/+bug/544495

Another Twitter client called Hotot ( https://launchpad.net/hotot ) has solved these issues by introducing two ways of retweeting; The old style (which allows editing, adding comments etc.) and the new native style, which bypasses the 140 char limit when retweeting. Gwibber would surely benefit from a similar feature.

[Martinique (martinique)]

To add to my comment #11, I'd suggest that instead of calling them "old" and "new/native" style retweets, which some users may find confusing, it might be wise to turn the existing retweet into native, perhaps with a confirmation similar to the Twitter web interface, and add an "Edit and retweet" function for the "old" style. That shouldn't be too much menu clutter.