MobileMe Gallery and international characters

Question

Level 3

770 points

MobileMe Gallery and international characters

(May this serve as a warning to others.)

I recently had trouble posting some vacation photos to a Gallery. My initial organization included a roll named Málaga (that's an accent on the first 'a'; it's a city in Spain). Later I organized other albums but the files' pathnames still contain the accented letter.

Posting an album to a MobileMe Gallery resulted in the error:
"An error occurred with the publication of album "[whatever]." Request to the server failed".
There were no errors listed in my Console logs.

I've found Apple warnings about having punctuation marks in photos and videos but this isn't quite the same issue.

The problem was very stubborn and I didn't realize the cause until I created another iPhoto Library and happened to use different names for rolls, etc.

A bug report has been filed.

...Neil

24" Core2Duo iMac. 15" PowerBook, 1.5GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.4), FCE 4, external FW disks, iLife '08

Posted on Jul 30, 2008 9:24 AM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

216,524 points

Jul 30, 2008 9:49 AM in response to Neil G

Neil:

Using non standard asci characters in site names has always been a problem. Thanks for the heads up. Here's some information I've gleamed from the iWeb forum regarding site/page names:

Renaming a website or webpage

You can rename a site or page at any time by double-clicking its name in the site organizer and typing the new name.

The page name appears at the top of the visitor's browser.

The site name is included in the website's address (URL):

http://web.mac.com/your account name/ or
http://web.me.com/your account name/

Renamed pages and sites (as well as the site's URL) change online the next time you publish.

IMPORTANT: If you rename a site, previously created links to your site won't work; be sure to notify your visitors, especially your blog or podcast subscribers.

iWeb now converts spaces in site names to "_". Also avoid non-Roman characters; many get converted to numbers when you publish.

Other characters that aren't recommended for use in website names are: forward and backward slashes (/ \), brackets ([ ]), tilde (~), exclamation point !, question mark (?), "at" sign (@), number sign (#), dollar sign ($), ampersand (&), asterisk (*), colon (:), equal sign (=), comma (,), and double quotation marks ("). Using these characters may result in names with strange numbers in them.

TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 6 and 7 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Note: There now an Automator backup application for iPhoto 5 that will work with Tiger or Leopard.

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Answer 2

Neil G Author

Level 3

770 points

Jul 30, 2008 1:42 PM in response to Old Toad

Alas, the site name wasn't the problem but the photos' pathname on the iMac. By creating a "roll" in iPhoto with an accented "a", OS X happily created a path and it's okay in the Finder and the (Unix) shell.

The general problem with putting 'punctuation' in site names is that HTTP syntax get confused. My problem is based on the transfer of the photos from a directory/folder that has a non-ASCII, but Unicode, character. The actual photos/files have simple names like IMG_8074.JPG.

I suspect this could be a wider problem outside the U.S. but haven't seen bugs reported.

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Answer 3

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jul 30, 2008 2:47 PM in response to Neil G

I suspect this could be a wider problem outside the U.S. but haven't seen bugs reported.

It may be - have you reported it to Apple - iPhoto menu ==> provide iPhoto feedback

LN

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Answer 4

Neil G Author

Level 3

770 points

Jul 30, 2008 3:16 PM in response to LarryHN

have you reported it to Apple

Yes, thru iPhoto feedback and thru a MobileMe agent. (Mentioned in my 1st post.)

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Answer 5

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jul 30, 2008 3:18 PM in response to Neil G

I see that -- now 🙂

LN

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Answer 6

Old Toad

Level 10

216,524 points

Jul 30, 2008 5:01 PM in response to Neil G

I do remember a problem with iPhoto 6 and non standard characters in album names or keywords. It caused a number of problems. The one I remember the best is that it caused problems when upgrading to iPhoto 08.

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Answer 7

Sep 7, 2008 10:23 AM in response to Old Toad

I have also had Aperture fail to publish a MobileMe gallery when there was a non-standard character (forward slash) in an image version name, though that string should never end up being a file or pathname.

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