ID:119066
 
BYOND Version:490
Operating System:Windows 7 Home Basic
Web Browser:Firefox 9.0
Applies to:Dream Seeker
Status: Unverified

Thus far we've been unable to verify or reproduce this bug. Or, it has been observed but it cannot be triggered with a reliable test case. You can help us out by editing your report or adding a comment with more information.
Descriptive Problem Summary:
At the moment, you can log the output window using BYOND. This is done via right clicking and pressing the 'Log' button. It logs and whatnot.

However, what i've noticed is not even halfway into the log, it distorts the text, removes most HTML code, and bundles it together. This makes the Log extremely difficult to read.

Screenshot included: http://i.imgur.com/wOgfZ.png

Numbered Steps to Reproduce Problem:
1.) Open a text-heavy game that sometimes uses HTML code
2.) Start logging
3.) Check the log after the log is finished.

I'm not sure exactly what is causing the problem so it's hard to debug.

Code Snippet (if applicable) to Reproduce Problem:
Not applicable.


Expected Results:
Log wasn't distorted

Actual Results:
Log is distorted

Does the problem occur:
Every time? Or how often? Nearly every time
In other games? Unsure
In other user accounts? Yes
On other computers? Yes

When does the problem NOT occur? Not sure.

Did the problem NOT occur in any earlier versions? If so, what was the last version that worked? (Visit http://www.byond.com/download/build to download old versions for testing.)

It's probably been doing this for a while, maybe since logs were first implemented. Not sure.

Workarounds:

Copy+Paste into notepad from now on instead of using the log feature?
I tried logging and letting the text flow to the point where the output control started dropping lines, but I was unable to reproduce the issue. I'll need a demo.
I'm not sure how to come up with a demo since I haven't isolated the issue, but i'll update if/when I can. It just happens every time i'm trying to log these giant rps. This is a text-heavy game so the logs would be enormous. You can see how big the log is from the screenshot even after the text is bundled together.

Is there some sort of size restriction set upon logs where it will auto-bundle the text when it reaches a certain threshold? I'll keep looking but it'd be nice to know.
If by "bundle" you mean the loss of the line breaks, that is not intentional so there is no feature that would deliberately do that. I went with my best guess and tried to get the ouptut to overflow so it would start discarding lines, but that didn't end up reproducing the issue.
Alright, I figured it out. The problem is because i'm using Firefox to view the file apparantly, when I view the logs in Internet Explorer this problem stops occuring. It seems like Firefox doesn't like lots of line breaks in its files or something. So it's not an issue with the code, just a problem with the browser.
If you can send me a copy of the log file that this happened to, I think I can work out how to modify the logs so Firefox stops freaking out about the text.
http://files.byondhome.com/Mistamage123/log.htm

Sure, here you go. I've had someone using Firefox 6 confirm it happens on that version as well, (i'm using the new firefox beta)
I don't actually see an issue in that log myself. It may require a newer Firefox version to see. Chrome also doesn't show an issue.

What I do see however is a preponderance of unclosed font tags. It seems like the log HTML could use some cleaning up.
http://files.byondhome.com/Mistamage123/log2.htm

One more log. I've so far had four other people confirm the log is showing up incorrectly in Firefox with the line breaks dissipating after a certain period.

I've had the following versions of Firefox confirmed to be affected by the issue:

*5.0.1
*6.0.2 (two people confirmed this version to have the issue)
*7.0
*9.0a1

Yeah, the font tags are a problem too, but that's probably the fault of mine. The text appears correctly ingame but I think that BYOND accounts for tags being unclosed whereas the logs don't.

Anyone reading this post on Firefox is welcome to see if the log works correctly as well.
Happens to me too, Firefox 7.0.1

I think Firefox is choking on the depth the tags are nested, since none of them are ever closed.
I recently ran into this issue in Chrome, but the logs render fine in Internet Explorer. I recently requested a tag balancer script (thanks again DarkProtest!) that you can run logs through to fix up HTML issues. Generally after doing so, the logs won't break anymore.
Do the HTML tags really need to be included with a log file?

I've also had problems viewing logs before because the developer had unclosed tags. I think it would be better if they were just excluded all together (besides the breaks, between comments, for readability)
Well, when logging you can choose whether to log as .htm or .txt (It seems this has been changed, it was possible in 3.5 but not now I guess WOOPS), but I prefer HTML since the games I play use different font colours to differentiate between different players.