Forbidden characters in floating text?

Is there a list somewhere (as if, hehe, but have to ask) of characters that are safe or not safe to use in floating? I'm finding that sometime I can't rez an object, and I'm suspecting it is because of this floating text:

(`'•.¸(`'•.¸(`'•.¸(`'•.¸ * ¸.•'´)¸.•'´)¸.•'´)¸.•'´)
asdf
(¸.•'`(¸.•'`(¸.•'`(¸.•'` * `'•.¸)`'•.¸)`'•.¸)`'•.¸)


Why do I suspect?

Because I've encountered it before, if the floating text had a heart symbol ♥ in it; the object would fail to rez.

This floating text would cause an item to fail to rez (forever):

♥(`'•.¸(`'•.¸ (`'•.¸(`'•.¸* ¸.•'´)¸.•'´)¸.•'´)¸.•'´)♥

Hmm, interesting. I'm heading in world now for some tests to see if what you're saying is true.

Edit:

Ok, I'm back. I made two test objects, one with the first line (without hearts), and one with the line that contains hearts. Named both, took them into my inventory, rezzed both the one without hearts and the one with several times, no fail at all.

My suggestions...

Are you rezzing onto a mega prim? About the only time I have issues rezzing objects (sans SL being borked) is when rezzing onto a mega prim. I usually have a mega prim platform, and I generally rez a regular 10x10x.05 to rez onto if I'm having issues rezzing onto a mega prim.

Check the server version. I was in a sim running Second Life Server 1.34.1.141394. See if yours is the same, if not, try rezzing in different sims and see if you get the same issue in sims running different versions, might be an issue with a particular server release.

I'd be wary of any character that you can't paste into the name or description of a prim... which would include the acute accent, and possible the dot (which will insert, but only as ???).

it may not be the prim that's giving the issue, but whatever script you've used to set the text. I'd recommend that said script be compiled in mono for starters, for maximum character support.

About six months ago, it was the heart in the floating that was causing the issue -- that I narrowed down through a mere 48 hours of trial and error testing.

Now a customer is reporting the same, non-rez issue. And in the past six months, we've been through a few server versions. So who knows, maybe now the boom has been lowered on other characters.

I think I'll do what Void suggests -- see what characters won't paste into a prim name or desc line. Or, kill the "decorated text" feature entirely, hehe. Could be the safest way to go, if successive server upgrades are going to make the "decorated text" feature a touch and go one at best. It's not mission critical for the application in question.


p.s. scripts are in Mono, yep

oddly, the heart DOES paste in... :hrug::

although with the errors I've seen recently... there's no telling.

It is definitely happening under certain circumstances (the special characters in floating text preventing rezzing).

certain circumstances >> dunno.

I'm just gonna nuke that feature on the product.

I had, a while away, put a warning in the "official" wiki about special characters in floating text so that other people wouldn't tear their hair out, but that warning was removed within micro-seconds by the person in charge of the wiki. Too useful a piece of information, I suppose. Sigh.

Edit: you know, it could be, for all I know, the *colour* that users choose to display the text in -- though they have to choose from a controlled menu that the colour vector gets set from, so they can't type a vector wrong.

Edit: Checked my logs. The Linden I dealt with this on was Amber Linden, back in April 2009. Her only guess was that it was caused by characters that the system seemed to accept at the time but ultimately decided not to. She said she'd seen this issue in file names for example, causing things not to rez at some point later in time.

I think it was the memory of the filename discussion that prompted me to suggest the name field along with portions of the discussion about lack of character support in those fields for no english characters...

sorry I wish I had something to add at this point, and a reproducible case would really help... (which is probably why your warning got axed Chaz... the similar warning of intemitant failures of LINK_SET etc, suffered the same fate, although I haven't retested that one in ages)