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Emojis at the start of a cache name make problems with GARMIN GPS devices


frostengel

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Good morning,

 

the thread title says it all. ;)

The GARMIN devices I know (Oregon, Dakota, GPSMAP), probably all of them, don't like emojis in cache titles too much. They just cut off the name with the first appearance.

Let's say this is the cache title:

image.png.1c1177829d219f71238fae92df3050bc.png

If only the last emoji appeared the cache name was readable. But in this case the whole cache name is empty (cut off after the first bow emoji) with consequences:

- This particular cache is shown in the list with an empty name.

- I can't search for the cache in the list (as it has no name).

- After logging the cache it does not appear in the list of found caches.

- The draft won't work with empty names.

 

So I suggest to ban emojis as first sign in the cache name.

Ideally I liked if emojis only were used at the end of the cache name (than the whole name is readable) but even if it appeared after the first word than at least the cache would exist for the device.

 

No cache name loses its coolness if it is not beginning with an emoji.

 

Thanks! Jochen

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9 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

 

Thanks for posting the link but as you see nothing has changed since then. This bug still exists and the admin's didn't even respond to the problem.

In the linked thread there is no useful solution to a problem with a simple solution: just ban emojis as first sign in cache names.

 

Probably banning emojis at all would be the best idea but my simple suggestion is less strict than the one in the linked thread. I would be fine if at least one normal character needed to be used before the first emoji. Noone loses anything that way.

 

Jochen

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20 hours ago, frostengel said:

 

Thanks for posting the link but as you see nothing has changed since then. This bug still exists and the admin's didn't even respond to the problem.

In the linked thread there is no useful solution to a problem with a simple solution: just ban emojis as first sign in cache names.

 

Probably banning emojis at all would be the best idea but my simple suggestion is less strict than the one in the linked thread. I would be fine if at least one normal character needed to be used before the first emoji. Noone loses anything that way.

 

Jochen

The bug is with Garmin, not Groundspeak. This is not an official Garmin support channel.

 

The previous thread, and especially the previous previous thread from 2020 give solutions to help your device work with these caches. In 2020 someone even offered to code a service for it.
 

I’m all out of sympathy for anyone who’s spent two years refusing offers of help and hasn’t even tried to adjust their workflow. This is your problem, not everyone else’s. 

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20 minutes ago, mustakorppi said:

The bug is with Garmin, not Groundspeak. This is not an official Garmin support channel.

 

The previous thread, and especially the previous previous thread from 2020 give solutions to help your device work with these caches. In 2020 someone even offered to code a service for it.
 

I’m all out of sympathy for anyone who’s spent two years refusing offers of help and hasn’t even tried to adjust their workflow. This is your problem, not everyone else’s. 

But Garmin is a tool to play this game with, and not everyone has the skill to change it. I too am tired of people defending unnecessary emojis. My solution is to mostly not to find those caches. You might think some instructions are simple, but they aren't for people with almost no skill in this area. 

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1 hour ago, mustakorppi said:

The previous thread, and especially the previous previous thread from 2020 give solutions to help your device work with these caches. In 2020 someone even offered to code a service for it.
 

I’m all out of sympathy for anyone who’s spent two years refusing offers of help and hasn’t even tried to adjust their workflow. This is your problem, not everyone else’s. 

 

I don't want to code anything. Everyone using a GPS device has this particular problem, so everyone needs to find the coding and change something. Just because that you can use an emoji in the beginning?

I’m all out of sympathy for anyone saying that they need to have an emoji as first sign if they can use their emojis at any other place in the cache name. You don't lose anything so why are you so mad about my suggestion?

 

It's a but considering Groundspeak's output and Garmin's input so why not change the output if this is one part of the problem?

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I don’t think the earlier instructions were simple to follow, that’s not really what I’m saying. But

  1. If you think HQ is going to forcibly rename caches because of Garmin or because you think emojis are useless, you’re delusional
  2. HQ could create an new gpx export filter, but they generally seem unwilling to make quality of life improvements to old features 
  3. If you would like a community solution you sure don’t act that way, which is why you don’t have one.
Edited by mustakorppi
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1 hour ago, GeoTrekker26 said:

GS should change the output by not allowing emojis in the name of the cache since the emojis serve no useful purpose.

 

It is not about emojis, it is about unicode. Support for unicode is required to support foreign languages. For example unicode is required for caches like https://coord.info/GC9M582

I am not against ASCII GPX export feature as an option. You may ask HQ to develop one - but in the meantime you could also try another solutions.

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🚶‍♂️🟰2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣🧒

 

(As a millennial...)

 

💬📳 🚫🔤 😀🤣🤩😎

 

(...when chatting with friends on the phone, I do not use letters; only emojis...)

 

👴👴👴 (😒🙄😒🙄) 📝🔤

 

(...only old people (eye roll) write using letters. Boomers.)

 

🚫😀🤣🤩😎🚫

 

(If we were to ban emojis...)

 

🧒➡️😱🤯😱

 

(...I would absolutely lose my mind...) 

 

🔺🧠💡💭🙅‍♂️🙅🙅‍♀️

 

(...therefore this idea should not be implemented.)

 

🙏👂(📖?)🗣️

 

(Thank you for listening (reading?) to what I have to say.)

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57 minutes ago, Hügh said:

🚶‍♂️🟰2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣🧒

 

(As a millennial...)

 

💬📳 🚫🔤 😀🤣🤩😎

 

(...when chatting with friends on the phone, I do not use letters; only emojis...)

 

👴👴👴 (😒🙄😒🙄) 📝🔤

 

(...only old people (eye roll) write using letters. Boomers.)

 

🚫😀🤣🤩😎🚫

 

(If we were to ban emojis...)

 

🧒➡️😱🤯😱

 

(...I would absolutely lose my mind...) 

 

🔺🧠💡💭🙅‍♂️🙅🙅‍♀️

 

(...therefore this idea should not be implemented.)

 

🙏👂(📖?)🗣️

 

(Thank you for listening (reading?) to what I have to say.)

 

Without your English translations, those emojis seem about as meaningful to me as:

BPkhd}?Q8rR^<v*g-ECP8/4)r2^w@-sh
B"Y;!W8@Vj}QeQ2oR4,-+. X;<CJOFi%
++++
NO CARRIER
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Likewise, these glyphs

 

1 hour ago, niraD said:

Without your English translations, those emojis seem about as meaningful to me as

 

are completely foreign and incomprehensible to anyone from China, Iran, Georgia, Bangladesh, Algeria, Israel, and anywhere else that doesn't use the Latin alphabet. 

 

Some people use emojis; others don't. While they are not an "alphabet" per se, they are not above nor below any other alphabet. Millions use them to communicate every day. Banning them, even only in the initial position, is arbitrary nonsense. The sensible solution, I believe, is

 

5 hours ago, arisoft said:

ASCII GPX export feature as an option

 

for those that are using devices with bugs that prevent it from processing UTF-8 correctly. (I believe it was established in the other thread that some UTF-8 characters are rendered correctly by Garmins, but older devices may be worse.)

Edited by Hügh
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7 hours ago, GeoTrekker26 said:

emojis serve no useful purpose.

 

Well in that case, we should also ban Chinese and Japanese pictograms...

 

Wait, pictograms?

 

Like, emojis?

 

Their whole language system uses emojis!

 

Whaaaaaatever. They look pretty useless if you ask me. I mean, I've never needed to use Chinese pictograms! Same with the Arabic alphabet, Cyrillic, and Hebrew too; never used 'em. And while we're at it, let's also get rid of letters with diacritics... "ç"? "è"? I've never used those before. Bye-bye! Who really cares about the people who use those symbols to communicate, anyways.

 

(The only one that we'll keep is "ü", of course, since that one's in my name.)

Edited by Hügh
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3 minutes ago, Hügh said:

 

Well in that case, we should also ban Chinese and Japanese pictograms...

 

Wait, pictograms?

 

Like, emojis?

 

Their whole language system uses emojis!

 

Whaaaaaatever. They look pretty useless if you ask me. I mean, I've never needed to use Chinese pictograms! Same with the Arabic alphabet, Cyrillic, and Hebrew too; never used 'em. And while we're at it, let's also get rid of letters with diacritics... "ç"? "è"? I've never used those before. Bye-bye! Who really cares about the people who use those symbols to communicate, anyways.

 

(The only one that we'll keep is "ü", of course, since that one's in my name.)

You are purposely getting off track. Strawmen arguments. 

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1 hour ago, Goldenwattle said:

You are purposely getting off track. Strawmen arguments.

 

Are they, though? You said earlier that 

 

12 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

people defending unnecessary emojis

 

If I said that "I am tired of people defending unnecessary... Arabic characters," people would not look upon that statement favourably. 

 

How are Arabic characters and emojis different? They are both character systems used by millions to communicate every day. Is one "unnecessary" and the other "necessary"? Why? What property makes emojis "unnecessary" and Arabic "necessary"? That emojis are little pictures? Then why not ban Japanese and Chinese pictograms? But those are, I expect you to say, "necessary"... why? How are they different from emojis? The (very much linguistic) property that "Garmin GPSrs can't process them"?

Edited by Hügh
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6 hours ago, Hügh said:

How are Arabic characters and emojis different?

No one has emojis as their native language's writing system, that is the difference. Banning emojis from cache names does not exclude any particular language group. However, if it is so that some Garmins don't accept cache names containing e.g. Japanese characters, then there is a problem that can't be solved by banning anything.

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9 hours ago, Hügh said:

 

Are they, though? You said earlier that 

 

 

If I said that "I am tired of people defending unnecessary... Arabic characters," people would not look upon that statement favourably. 

 

How are Arabic characters and emojis different? They are both character systems used by millions to communicate every day. Is one "unnecessary" and the other "necessary"? Why? What property makes emojis "unnecessary" and Arabic "necessary"? That emojis are little pictures? Then why not ban Japanese and Chinese pictograms? But those are, I expect you to say, "necessary"... why? How are they different from emojis? The (very much linguistic) property that "Garmin GPSrs can't process them"?

Apparently languages can be added, so not a comparison. At least Japanese, as I have seen the instructions for doing this.

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10 hours ago, ChriBli said:

No one has emojis as their native language's writing system

 

How are we defining "language"? Google gives a few definitions; perhaps the most convenient for my thesis is 

 

a system of communication used by a particular country or community.

 

Us millenials certainly use emojis to communicate. They are not our "native language" but we do use them enough that you might think that they are our second language. 

 

10 hours ago, ChriBli said:

However, if it is so that some Garmins don't accept cache names containing e.g. Japanese characters, then there is a problem that can't be solved by banning anything

 

Indeed. The sensible solution, I think, is an ASCII-only export option. This would solve the problem not just for Garmins but also other GPSrs and technologies that have issues processing UTF-8. 

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6 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

Well you are not communicating if many can't see the titles. Fail. Keep tying to justify the unnecessary.

 

ok boomer

 

Look, people being able to express their ideas using glyphs they're comfortable with is far more important to me than your GPS rendering every single cache. You're never going to find all three million caches so who cares if you miss out on a few.

Edited by Hügh
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18 minutes ago, Hügh said:

 

ok boomer

 

Look, people being able to express their ideas using glyphs they're comfortable with is far more important to me than your GPS rendering every single cache. You're never going to find all three million caches so who cares if you miss out on a few.

You are purposely causing division, in your narrow, inward looking view. If you can't express it by words, I'm sorry for you. Most of us stopped needing to put little pictures when a toddler. Words encompass all. What you are suggesting doesn't. You are suggesting division. (Y r suggesting division.) Your throw away use of words, "ok boomer" is divisionism. Why are you doing this? What is you need?

Edited by Goldenwattle
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I'm not a boomer, but I like the idea of prohibiting an emoji as the very first character in a cache title. Express yourself all you want in the rest of the title. It's about accessibility and inclusiveness. I thought millennials were all about that. :drama:

 

Question for those who experience this: does a space count as a character that allows the rest of the cache title to show?

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6 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

You are purposely causing division, in your narrow, inward looking view.

 

You made the claim that emojis are unnecessary, I am arguing that that is not true; millions use them.

 

At this point, I've made all my points and you've made all yours; I hope we can agree that continued shouting about emojis being un/necessary is not going to be productive. Part of me is tempted to stalk all 12,000 geocache logs you've ever written to see if you've ever used an emoji (even once!) but I won't do that. 

 

Also: a perfectly good solution, that does not involve a hard-to-define bodge (what exactly are we banning from titles here?), has been suggested. I have repeated this suggestion many times:

 

On 6/29/2022 at 2:00 PM, arisoft said:

I am not against ASCII GPX export feature as an option.

 

You are, I believe, yet to comment on this suggestion. This has the advantage that, if someone comes along in a year claiming that their XYZ-brand GPS has trouble rendering ABC-language characters, we don't have to bodge additional restrictions on cache titles and what can appear where. The option to strip (or replace with "?"s) all emojis/non-ASCII will already be there and will hopefully be sufficient for their use-case. Do you have any issue with this suggestion? It would seem like it would allow both of us to remain happy about this game—I can have my emojis in cache titles but they'll disappear by the time they arrive on your GPSr. It solves the problem, in a convenient way, without imposing strange (first character only?) restrictions on the formatting of a cache listing. 

 

6 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

Your throw away use of words, "ok boomer" is divisionism.

 

I will agree that that was uncalled for, and apologize for it. I just assumed that you were not someone who uses emojis on a day-to-day basis, and was frustrated by the fact that you were so dismissive of emojis—perhaps you just don't realize how often people use them? Emojis can often carry connotations that words just can't. Replacing an emoji with an "equivalent" word changes meaning. They are an important piece of how the Internet operates. 

Edited by Hügh
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7 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

You are purposely causing division, in your narrow, inward looking view. If you can't express it by words, I'm sorry for you. Most of us stopped needing to put little pictures when a toddler. Words encompass all. What you are suggesting doesn't. You are suggesting division. (Y r suggesting division.) Your throw away use of words, "ok boomer" is divisionism. Why are you doing this? What is you need?

Hi, generation x here.
 

The divisionism started with your side completely dismissing other people’s preferred way to communicate. All while taking it for granted that your preference for Garmin devices needs to take precedence over everyone else’s.


 

7 hours ago, TriciaG said:

I like the idea of prohibiting an emoji as the very first character in a cache title.

A single find & replace on a gpx file can guarantee every cache name starts with a word a Garmin can read. 

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3 hours ago, mustakorppi said:

The divisionism started with your side completely dismissing other people’s preferred way to communicate.

I like to use emojis too (you don't own them, as it's coming across as), but there is a place for them, and it is not at the start of the title. Put one, put many, many, go ahead have fun, express yourself at the end of the title as much as you want to. That won't effect others and you can play with them.

Edited by Goldenwattle
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It must be because I'm a boomer, but when I look at the title of this recently-published cache I'm none the wiser about what it means:

 

image.png.5f7abcc607d32f4c0a62e1f0bb7c5b38.png

Is that emoji supposed to be a pair of binoculars, an artist's palette or, well, I'm really out of ideas. Or maybe the puzzle is about figuring out what the title's supposed to mean. Some emojis I get, like :), :P or even :drama: but most others might just as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics.

 

Before jumping in and filling your cache titles with emojis, maybe just think about whether it's actually going to help someone decide if they might want to click on it and read the description. But there I go again, reading cache descriptions is so boomerish. Now where did I put my papyrus charts and sextant?

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11 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Is that emoji supposed to be a pair of binoculars, an artist's palette or, well, I'm really out of ideas.

It's a Computer Game Controller. (HDMI TV Game Stick)

s-l1600.jpg

Edited by HHL
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11 hours ago, HHL said:

It's a Computer Game Controller. (HDMI TV Game Stick)

s-l1600.jpg

Okay, so it's a subset of people who would understand that; gamers. Not everyone in the younger age group are gamers either. So not only old boring boomers might not understand that one. Now, this old boring boomer needs to get back to doing old boring boomer things. At present I'm driving around the edge of Australia. Boring ...

No where as action packed and exciting as sitting at home gaming and living life :antenna::ph34r:.

Edited by Goldenwattle
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Is there any LACKEY here who is able to say something to the problem?

We can talk all day but only Groundspeak staff can do something about it - or say that they don't care what problems we have and that having emojis as first sign is more important than the conviniece of GARMIN users.

 

@Moun10Bike or others, can you contribute something or give this suggestion to your technicians if you agree?

 

Jochen

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The thread is such a train wreck that I debated whether to close it.  For feature requests, if a response from HQ is desired, it's good to stick to simple discussions of use cases and pros/cons.

 

I can't speak for HQ, but I can offer an opinion as a Volunteer Reviewer: if this "ban" is implemented, it had better be system enforced and not something that I need to spend volunteer time to explain to people.

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44 minutes ago, Keystone said:

The thread is such a train wreck that I debated whether to close it.  For feature requests, if a response from HQ is desired, it's good to stick to simple discussions of use cases and pros/cons.

 

That's what I wanted with this thread and I think those who share my opinion do so, too. I was away some days from the forum and wasn't too happy about the misuse of the thread. I don't even know what some are talking about here, the only topic I wanted to discuss are emojis as first sign of a cache name making problems for GARMIN device users.

 

So please don't close threads like this. The offtopic usually comes from those not supporting the suggestion as they don't see the reason to discuss the topic. If they can simply get rid of suggestions which they do not like by bombarding threads with offtopic they will do every time. :(

 

I am happy if you - instead - deleted offtopic posts in this kind of threads, that's a better solution to closing them.

 

44 minutes ago, Keystone said:

I can't speak for HQ, but I can offer an opinion as a Volunteer Reviewer: if this "ban" is implemented, it had better be system enforced and not something that I need to spend volunteer time to explain to people.

 

That's exactly what I want. A simple algorithm checking that the first sign needs to be a number or letter or some selected signs like "#". If not the cache should get automatically rejected.

 

It should be easily implemented and most GARMIN users would benefit from it. I haven't read any contra so far only the argument "there is a solution if anyone with this problem overworks the pocket query every time" which is no solution in such a case.

 

Thanks for your answer.

Jochen

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50 minutes ago, frostengel said:

A simple algorithm checking that the first sign needs to be a number or letter or some selected signs like "#".

 

While I have argued vehemently for emojis, and I still stand by that, I will agree that emojis are not absolutely necessary in cache titles. Almost ever use I've seen seem to be decorative rather than communicative.

 

Still, Geocaching is a global game and forcing group that do not use the English alphabet to begin their cache titles with an English letter seems nonsensical. The algorithm absolutely should not reject (what some have called) "actual" languages and alphabets, ie. Japanese, Cyrillic, etc. Emojis, too, are used globally — but we've already had that argument here so I won't go near that again. 

 

50 minutes ago, frostengel said:

It should be easily implemented

 

"Easily"? That seems like an understatement.

 

I'm not trying to impose a Herculean task upon you, but—as the person making this request, surely it is incumbent on you to do some of the work in identifying which characters cause issues on Garmins? Please provide a list of codepoints. The characters that do not cause issues really should not be banned. 

 

Much of the Geocaching.com site is in a state of disrepair; I don't want some poor HQ (intern?) Lackey to have to spend weeks testing different characters on Garmins to see which ones cause issues... especially when there are less intrusive solutions that move the "banning" to download-time. 

 

- The option to strip "emojis" at download time from GPX downloads.
- The option to strip anything beyond standard ASCII (ie. anything that can't be typed on an American QWERTY keyboard) from GPX downloads.
- Or, instead of strip, have the option to replace these characters with "?"s in GPX downloads.
- The option to include a custom prefix (ie. "GC: ") at the beginning of every geocache.

 

While my suggestion does still require some work on HQ's part, it is much less intrusive. When you download the Pocket Query, the server can (optionally) run a re.sub(/[^\x00-\x7f]/,. "?") on the "title" field to drop anything beyond standard ASCII. 

 

That way, people who want to include emojis in their cache titles can; and those using older GPSrs, with the tick of a box, will be able to obtain GPXes compatible with their devices.

 

50 minutes ago, frostengel said:

I haven't read any contra so far only the argument "there is a solution if anyone with this problem overworks the pocket query every time"

 

One of my concerns with such an overarching ban has already been stated. 

 

On 6/30/2022 at 4:46 PM, Hügh said:

if someone comes along in a year claiming that their XYZ-brand GPS has trouble rendering ABC-language characters, we don't have to bodge additional restrictions on cache titles and what can appear where.

 

It is completely believable, I think, that someone comes along in a year or so claiming that certain characters don't render correctly. Do we then expand and alter the restrictions on cache titles (which affect everyone) to comfort those individuals? It would be a lot easier to alter the system that alters cache titles in various ways at download-time. 

Edited by Hügh
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1 hour ago, frostengel said:

That's exactly what I want. A simple algorithm checking that the first sign needs to be a number or letter or some selected signs like "#". If not the cache should get automatically rejected.

 

Can you explain, how this can fix the problem properly? There are already plenty of published geocaches with emojis in the title. I have made one  https://coord.info/GC8AZ85
Banning this feature from new caches doesn't make the real problem disappear at all. Removing unwanted characters from the GPX file fix the problem permanently. What are your arguments against this solution?

Edited by arisoft
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3 minutes ago, arisoft said:

There are already plenty of published geocaches with emojis in the title

 

One of my issues with removal is that it's difficult to "go back" or "undo." To me, it makes the most sense to store data without any restrictions, and then to provide mechanisms to export obeying certain restrictions. In other words, restrict data as "late" as possible. 

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45 minutes ago, arisoft said:

Can you explain, how this can fix the problem properly? There are already plenty of published geocaches with emojis in the title. I have made one  https://coord.info/GC8AZ85
Banning this feature from new caches doesn't make the real problem disappear at all. Removing unwanted characters from the GPX file fix the problem permanently. What are your arguments against this solution?

 

I have none. If there would be an additional button while creating pocket queries to replace any non standard sign with - let's say - a random number that would be a fine solution to me.

The cache title which I used as example would be "5 Wie, was, ein Bogen? 7" than and your cache only had numbers. I would use it and that's a perfect solution for my problems.

 

Nice solution though I think it's harder to implement. I am no expert in programming (that's an answer to your post @Hügh).

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5 minutes ago, frostengel said:

Nice solution though I think it's harder to implement.

 

It is as hard to find emojis from new titles as old titles.

 

I am little surprised that there is no easy to find tool for this problem already. Is it so, that no programmer is using Garmin GPSr anymore?  We have complex tools for spoiling reverse Wherigo caches etc. but nothing this easy to help Garmin users, really?

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1 hour ago, frostengel said:

Nice solution though I think it's harder to implement. I am no expert in programming

 

1 hour ago, arisoft said:

I am little surprised that there is no easy to find tool for this problem already.

 

If it were not for the unfortunate fact that I am on a road trip, I would happily create such a tool! :)

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A new gpx export filter is the only sane solution Groundspeak could provide. There’s no real objection to that, but… this is a fringe problem in a legacy feature could also be easily solved by the end users themselves. Meanwhile, there are years’ worth of other feature requests on these forums for things that are still being actively developed, e.g. the official app, that have received zero response from hq. 
 

1 hour ago, arisoft said:

I am little surprised that there is no easy to find tool for this problem already.

16 minutes ago, Hügh said:

I would happily create such a tool

The thing is that literally no one has said they would happily use such a tool. Mostly just the opposite. 🤷

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14 minutes ago, mustakorppi said:

The thing is that literally no one has said they would happily use such a tool.

 

Perhaps that is mainly because - luckily! - until now not very many caches with a starting emoji exist and only these lead to the real problems. At the moment I would call it "only annoying" as the possibility of missing a log - drafts with these caches do not work - is high and finding them in the GPS devide is hard.

 

If the use of emojis will spread - and I fear that might be - the necessity of such a tool will spread, too.

 

This might be some kind of user generated script (greasemonkey like) or - and I like that better - something Groundspeak provides for us.

 

Jochen

 

PS: Thank you, Hügh, I am sure you will return from your road trip some day and if Groundspeak hasn't solved it until then... :)

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On 7/3/2022 at 2:21 PM, frostengel said:

PS: Thank you, Hügh, I am sure you will return from your road trip some day

 

I have finally returned but now a certain large event is demanding my time. 

 

I promise, I'll make a tool!

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On 5/6/2023 at 1:43 PM, arisoft said:

The question about emojis in GPX popped up again. Please hurry :P

 

Okay, done. Kinda. Ish. Maybe. Who knows. If you look at the source you will see I have done this the naive way instead of the robust way so it may fall apart.

 

https://gpx-emoji-filter.surge.sh/

 

It seems to work on Firefox. I'd imagine it works on Chrome as well since I haven't done anything "weird." It works on GPXes generated by the Lists tool and well as Pocket Queries. Not sure about GSAK but I'd be surprised if that breaks it.

 

Interestingly there are two fields (<urlname> and <Groundspeak:name>) that contain the geocache name, I have naively opted to only replace the name in <Groundspeak:name>. Perhaps this is optimistic of me but I have no GPS handy to test. I suppose an easier solution would've been to just remove all emojis from everywhere...

 

Anyways it is 3am now so I will go to bed (and pray that I do not wake up to 1000 Forum pings about this tool being broken.)

 

EDIT:

 

On second thought I think it is fine to just nuke all emojis. You'll lose emojis in hints and logs but that doesn't matter if the device can't render them anyways.

 

Maybe there is some strange edge case where this aggressive strategy actually causes a technical problem, but I can't think of one.

 

https://gpx-emoji-filter-2.surge.sh/

 

I guess this isn't really a "GPX emoji filter" and moreso a "anyfile emoji filter" but that's fine...

Edited by Hügh
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Thanks for the tip! I'm going to use this..... :)

 

addit... at least test it.... I hadn't realised it was just completed... :)

It does seem to work fine though, with my Garmin Montana.

A suggestion - could you include an option to select the replacement character with something other than a ?, even just not replacing with anything??

Edited by lee737
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