Stripping of apostrophes in emails

[JohnF]

When I receive forum post notifications via email the apostrophes are
stripped from the message. I'm becomes Im, I've Ive, it's its, etc. Is it
practical to fix this?

[Angel]

It's a quick fix that was put in to get around a database hacking vulnerability... that's the short answer. Apostrophes are dangerous to databases, so unless we do clever things with them it's quicker and easier to remove them entirely.

[JohnF]

So fixing it is in the too hard basket?

[Robbo]

More, I suspect, it would take too much time and effort than is fair to ask of people who are already volounteering their own time, as it is, for a fairly minor thing.

[JohnF]

I agree that these are minor issues. The emails are in an easy to read
format. If it never gets fixed then the world will keep spinning. But if
someone was willing and able to fix it, then this would make a good site
better.

[Robbo]

volounteering?

[JohnF]

If I had access to a development site, on a rainy day I'd take a look and
figure out how to beautify the emails coming out of GD. Then feed anything I
find upstream.

I've only briefly touched phpBB, and that was an experiment with integrating
it with Drupal 6, to provide forum functionality. Stopped when I realised the
amount of work required to theme it all nicely. This was about three years
ago.

[NigelT]

Yup, I know your pain on the PhpBB Drupal integration and theming side of things. This stuff is never simple or straight forward.

The apostrophies issue could probably be fixed with a little fiddling, but Robbo so graciously and correctly pointed out - it's time most of us don't have and it's a pretty trivial thing. As much as I'd like to make a good site better, I can live with it being merely good and know that the world isn't quite perfect, but it's close enough.

Sorry - not the answer you wanted, but it's the reality of running something like this. It's impractical to try and farm out the development efforts to a multitute of people because it still requires someone going through it line-by-line reintegrating and checking the code before release and having the existing developers (me) do it will take just as much time. So it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

If we were planning any major upgrades or add-ons then I'd certainly consider getting more people involved; but for an apostrophe, it's simply too much overhead sorry. Thanks for the offer though.

Nigel

[JohnF]

I agree it is trivial. I was hoping the solution would be trivial too. Case closed.