[seqfan] Re: The server broke handling your request

[M. F. Hasler]

NJAS:
> I just typed in a long comment, but got that kick in the stomach
> when I did Save, and had to reconstruct the whole comment.
>
> Is this a random event, or does it become more likely the longer your comment is?

Although I think this is not relevant for the "sequence fanatics" but
rather for the "OEIS news/changes/problems" discussion list, I will
reply here.

I also experience this from time to time.
IMHO, the main inconvenient is not the error message, but the fact
that one is not able to re-send the request, as it is the case for
almost all other web sites with some form submission.
I do not understand completely why this is the case for OEIS but
(almost) nowhere else.
If anything could be done in order to enable us to
- either, hit Ctrl-R, or the (circular arrow) reload button, to
re-send the form data
- or use the browsers "Back" and then "Forward" function (which is
supposed to produce more or less the same result)
then this should absolutely be done,
since in that case the problem would be of negligible
impact/annoyance/frustration.

Second, I also don't understand that well why the "back" button does
not give me back the form as I filled in, but re-loads the edit page,
often with quite some loss.
Namely, this happens in some cases (irreproducable), when I
copy-pasted "rich text", e.g. an A-number which was hyperlinked, into
one of the textareas of the editing forms. (Why the heck do they
behave in that strange way, unlike e.g. the "pink box" comment
textarea which "nicely" converts the clipboard contents to plain text
[whereas a hyperlink would often be quite useful there rather than in
the editing fields which anyway should be text-only].)

Then the OEIS web site would typically print some cryptic error
message like "unexpected token on line xxx of input",
and discard the whole contents of the field in which I have pasted the
HTML. (E.g. if I add a last line of comment, not only this additional
last line, but all other previously existing comments would be erased.
)

I do not understand this last bug either, but again, if I could just
use the browser's "back" function to go back to the form I filled in
and correct this, then the problem would be much less frustrating.

NB: This bug report is by no means meant as critics: as Neil and
others, including myself, have always said, the OEIS webmasters do a
horrific good job. I just hope that this description & feedback may
help to pin down unwanted/unexpected behaviour to further improve the
user's experience, satisfaction & motivation.
Thanks in advance,
Best regards,
Maximilian