2109: Invisible Formatting - Revision history

TheusafBOT: Reverted edit 360914 by 172.71.214.243 to 355445

2025-01-03T00:28:24Z

Reverted edit 360914 by 172.71.214.243 to 355445

172.71.214.243 at 00:28, 3 January 2025

2025-01-03T00:28:18Z

172.68.205.179: Invalid categry

2024-11-02T18:51:53Z

Invalid categry

172.71.210.193 at 06:41, 2 November 2024

2024-11-02T06:41:32Z

172.71.210.192 at 06:41, 2 November 2024

2024-11-02T06:41:02Z

172.70.86.59: /* Explanation */ Caveats to the "how to avoid". One creates the issue, the other might create additional work redoing (selected) undone bits.

2024-06-24T22:20:37Z

‎Explanation: Caveats to the "how to avoid". One creates the issue, the other might create additional work redoing (selected) undone bits.

Hawthorn: Rewrite for clarity. Also, I don't know what text software the original editor used, but I'm pretty sure that in most software, double-clicking does not cause "the word and the space following to both become highlighted".

2024-06-24T21:11:10Z

Rewrite for clarity. Also, I don't know what text software the original editor used, but I'm pretty sure that in most software, double-clicking does not cause "the word and the space following to both become highlighted".

108.162.245.4 at 17:41, 15 May 2024

2024-05-15T17:41:29Z

162.158.2.82: /* Trivia */ Updated the URLs for the formatting marks help for LibreOffice and Microsoft Office.

2023-03-28T12:51:37Z

‎Trivia: Updated the URLs for the formatting marks help for LibreOffice and Microsoft Office.

172.69.22.185 at 20:30, 20 October 2022

2022-10-20T20:30:07Z

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{comic
 | number    = 2109
-| date      = February 8, 2024
+| date      = February 8, 2019
-| title     = IF
+| title     = Invisible Formatting
-| image     = barcode.png
+| image     = invisible_formatting.png
 | titletext = To avoid errors like this, we render all text and pipe it through OCR before processing, fixing a handful of irregular bugs by burying them beneath a smooth, uniform layer of bugs.
 }}

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{comic
 | number    = 2109
-| date      = February 8, 2019
+| date      = February 8, 2024
-| title     = Invisible Formatting
+| title     = IF
-| image     = invisible_formatting.png
+| image     = barcode.png
 | titletext = To avoid errors like this, we render all text and pipe it through OCR before processing, fixing a handful of irregular bugs by burying them beneath a smooth, uniform layer of bugs.
 }}

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 In the comic, Randall accidentally introduces the invisible formatting by selecting one more character than he needed to ("n", "o", "t", and an extra space character), applying bold formatting to those four characters, changing his mind, reselecting only the three characters "n", "o", "t", and removing the bold formatting. Because he failed to notice that a space character had been selected when applying the bold, he failed to remove the bold formatting from the space. As a result, the document now contains an invisible bold space that will likely go unchecked, as nobody can see it to fix it.
-There are a couple of ways Randall could have avoided this problem. In many word processors, double-clicking a word will select all characters in the word and nothing else; this is an easier action than trying to drag the cursor, which can be fiddly and inaccurate. This would have prevented Randall from accidentally selecting the space character. Alternatively, if the program had an "undo" feature, Randall could simply have undone the bold formatting instead of removing the formatting manually. This would have undone the bold formatting on the space character, fixing the problem (and saving time, too).
+There are a couple of ways Randall could have avoided this problem. In many word processors, double-clicking a word will select all characters in the word and nothing else; this is an easier action than trying to drag the cursor, which can be fiddly and inaccurate. This would have prevented Randall from accidentally selecting the space character; although could create the problem if multiple words (and the space(s) between) were initially enboldened but then constituent word-groupings were unenboldened, leaving the whitespace between unreverted. Alternatively, if the program had an "undo" feature, Randall could simply have undone the bold formatting instead of removing the formatting manually. This would have undone the bold formatting on the space character, fixing the problem (and saving time, too), but only presuming that other changes had not occured in the interim which weren't more important/time-saving to keep.
 Though Randall is likely thinking of computer-related problems caused by his invisible formatting, there is also another possible problem: it leaves trace evidence of Randall's formatting attempt. For example, if an editor later comes along and notices the bold space, they may figure out that Randall originally bolded the word "not" before changing his mind. Depending on the context, a bolded "not" could be enough to change the tone of the text from polite and formal to dismissive (eg. "We believe you are not suitable for this position." vs "We believe you are '''not''' suitable for this position.")

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 ==Explanation==
-In various word processor programs, when highlighting text, whether by clicking-and-dragging or double-clicking, it is easy to highlight characters which have no visible effects when markup''' '''is applied (ie ''italics'' or''' bold'''), such as a space or the end-of-paragraph passage. Since in most fonts the word space looks identical between the bold, the italicized, and the regular, this has no effect on how the end user will read the document, but could theoretically cause a problem in certain occasions, most notably in computers which might parse a bold space differently or incorrectly. This problem is compounded if the text cursor does not indicate''' '''clearly the space is in bold or italics''' '''when a user''' '''hovers their mouse over''' '''it. [[Randall]] worries about this.
+Most word processor programs allow the user to select sections of text, usually by clicking and dragging the cursor across the text, or by using common mouse shortcuts such as double-clicking to select a word and triple-clicking to select an entire line. The selection is usually indicated by highlighting the text's background, such as the bright blue highlight shown in the comic.
-In the pictured case, Randall''' '''does not appear to have selected the word by double-clicking, since the cursor is depicted past the end of the word instead of on top of it; rather, he has clicked-and-dragged the mouse cursor to select it.''' '''The space character is a relatively thin character, which makes it hard to avoid and to notice, but even so most''' '''people don’t worry''' '''if they've selected it and tend not to bother fixing. Randall later uses the same click-and-drag method to have the bold removed, but this time omits the space, retaining its bold formatting on that character. Since it is a blank character, there is no easy way to tell it is still bold — even if''' '''it is slightly longer in the bold font, this may be hard to notice. This is the situation the comic is highlighting, [[559: No Pun Intended|no pun intended]].
+A common reason for selecting text is so that formatting can be applied to the selection (eg. ''italics'' or '''bold''' formatting). Since space characters are part of the typography, such formatting gets applied to them too; however, as the character has no visible glyph, the formatting has no visible effect (a bold space looks exactly the same as an unformatted space). However, the formatting is ''still there'' in the document's underlying markup - it just can't be seen.
-Usually, if one were to highlight''' '''a word via double-clicking, the word and the space following would both become highlighted. Therefore, this problem could have been avoided if Randall had used this method to highlight,''' '''as the space would have been automatically included both times, thus removing markup on the space character as well.
+This leads to a possibility that a user may accidentally introduce invisible formatting into a document without noticing. Such formatting has no effect on how the end user will read the document, but it could theoretically cause problems for programs that later come along to parse the document, if those programs have not been told to expect formatting. [[Randall]] worries about this invisible threat.
-Though Randall is likely''' '''thinking of computer-related problems caused by his invisible formatting, there is also a chance that his bold space would cause other, non-computer-related issues. As Randall has bolded the word "not"''' '''but then changed his mind, it indicates that he believes writing '''not '''is too strongly-worded. With an invisible bold''' '''space, whoever the document was intended for could notice Randall's bold space and figure that the word "not" was originally bolded. Depending on the context, a bolded "not"''' '''could be enough to change the tone of the text from polite and formal to dismissive (eg. "We believe you are not suitable for this position." vs "We believe you are '''not '''suitable for this position.")
+In the comic, Randall accidentally introduces the invisible formatting by selecting one more character than he needed to ("n", "o", "t", and an extra space character), applying bold formatting to those four characters, changing his mind, reselecting only the three characters "n", "o", "t", and removing the bold formatting. Because he failed to notice that a space character had been selected when applying the bold, he failed to remove the bold formatting from the space. As a result, the document now contains an invisible bold space that will likely go unchecked, as nobody can see it to fix it.
-In the title text, Randall says that he “fixes” this by running the text through {{w|Optical character recognition|OCR}}, which turns physical copies or images into text. Although this would "fix" the invisible formatting (since the OCR is unable to detect it), this would usually ruin even more formatting, and add inaccuracies to the text. This way, no one can tell which bugs were introduced by him and which ones by the OCR, which he facetiously suggests is better somehow.
+There are a couple of ways Randall could have avoided this problem. In many word processors, double-clicking a word will select all characters in the word and nothing else; this is an easier action than trying to drag the cursor, which can be fiddly and inaccurate. This would have prevented Randall from accidentally selecting the space character. Alternatively, if the program had an "undo" feature, Randall could simply have undone the bold formatting instead of removing the formatting manually. This would have undone the bold formatting on the space character, fixing the problem (and saving time, too).
 As the title text explains, Randall finds it very important to control all information he publishes. Real-world examples are governments changing the impact of reports for political reasons. Attempted tampering of this kind can be revealed by bold spaces. Another example would be a casual and short one-sentence reply e.g. to a romantic interest, which one takes one hour to formulate to sound as natural as possible.

@@ Line 64: / Line 64: @@
 *Bold (or italic or non-breaking) spaces are also popular in {{w|Steganography|steganography}}. By using bold spaces in some places and not in others it is possible to hide secret information in a public text, that will not be visible to the casual reader, who does not explicitly search for the hidden information. Additionally if such a document is found with a person, that person can {{w|Plausible_deniability|plausibly deny}} all knowledge of the encoded information.
-Popular modern word processing programs have features which may make it easier to notice improperly formatted invisible characters. In the tutorials linked here, one may learn how to view invisible characters in [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/show-or-hide-formatting-marks-c2d8a607-5646-4165-8b08-bd68f9d172a0 Microsoft Word], [https://support.apple.com/kb/PH23650?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US Pages] and [https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Nonprinting_Characters LibreOffice Writer], however even with this on it would be difficult to spot a bolded space (which looks like a bolded dot &ndash; now visible but so small it's still hard to tell if it's bold or not). In the older word processor {{w|WordPerfect}}, one could do this with the “Reveal Codes” feature, which showed you character codes, separate from the characters themselves, around the characters.  For example, a bolded space would look something like "<span style="background:#34F5FF">[BOLD&#8827;</span>&ensp;<span style="background:#34F5FF">&#8826;BOLD]</span>".
+Popular modern word processing programs have features which may make it easier to notice improperly formatted invisible characters. In the tutorials linked here, one may learn how to view invisible characters in [https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/show-or-hide-tab-marks-in-word-84a53213-5d02-404a-b022-09cae1a3958b Microsoft Word], [https://support.apple.com/kb/PH23650?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US Pages] and [https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/01/03100000.html LibreOffice Writer], however even with this on it would be difficult to spot a bolded space (which looks like a bolded dot &ndash; now visible but so small it's still hard to tell if it's bold or not). In the older word processor {{w|WordPerfect}}, one could do this with the “Reveal Codes” feature, which showed you character codes, separate from the characters themselves, around the characters.  For example, a bolded space would look something like "<span style="background:#34F5FF">[BOLD&#8827;</span>&ensp;<span style="background:#34F5FF">&#8826;BOLD]</span>".
 Web sites which allow content to be edited by users but generate the formatting code automatically often have versions of the invisible formatting problem; for example, eBay listings which use anything other than the default font rapidly accumulate hard spaces, font end and begin transitions, and other invisible formatting if they are subsequently edited, which can slow page loading and cause other problems. This is also seen in blogs etc.

@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 As the title text explains, Randall finds it very important to control all information he publishes. Real-world examples are governments changing the impact of reports for political reasons. Attempted tampering of this kind can be revealed by bold spaces. Another example would be a casual and short one-sentence reply e.g. to a romantic interest, which one takes one hour to formulate to sound as natural as possible.
-There are also other occasions where a hidden bold space may be a problem for later editors (see the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section below). Randall’s background in {{w|computer programming}} could also make him more attentive to these types of technical problems, and therefore add this as a reason for his worries about invisible formating.
+There are also other occasions where a hidden bold space may be a problem for later editors (see the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section below). Randall’s background in {{w|computer programming}} could also make him more attentive to these types of technical problems, and therefore add this as a reason for his worries about invisible formatting.
 ==Transcript==