Hard Light Productions Forums

Site Management => Site Support / Feedback => Topic started by: JSRNerdo on April 10, 2018, 04:48:50 pm

Title: Name question
Post by: JSRNerdo on April 10, 2018, 04:48:50 pm

Is [`_`]/ a legal username for the HLP forums? It's entirely non-alphanumeric characters and contains slashes and graves so it might break things, which is why I'm wondering.

Title: Re: Name question
Post by: Goober5000 on April 12, 2018, 03:16:44 pm

The forum database is encoded in UTF-8, and we have other members with special characters in their names (the most creative probably being (†)Revenant™(†) (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=33840)), so from a technical standpoint it won't break things.

From a community standpoint, we don't have anyone else whose name consists purely of ASCII art.  On the one hand, I wouldn't want a swarm of emoticon usernames.  On the other hand, you're the first person to propose this in seventeen years, so that may not turn out to be a problem.

Title: Re: Name question
Post by: Rhymes on April 12, 2018, 03:27:21 pm

Also he could have his custom text say "it's pronounced face" or whatever if clarity is an issue.

Title: Re: Name question
Post by: chief1983 on April 14, 2018, 10:28:51 am

May not be so much about clarity as trying to use Private Messaging or Member Search.  Especially the former, you'd practically have to use member search.  But that applies to anyone with UTF-8 characters not on the keyboard.

Title: Re: Name question
Post by: Grizzly on April 14, 2018, 01:23:58 pm

[`_`]/ is all on the keyboard right? I'm using the US international thingy

Title: Re: Name question
Post by: chief1983 on April 14, 2018, 04:17:13 pm

Yeah in this case, the UTF-8 ones not so much, although remembering the exact character sequence off hand is a lot more difficult than less bizarre usernames.   Still, we do have the search function and most people probably hit the PM button in a forum thread anyway.