Bug: SendChatMessage(): Chat message must be in UTF-8 text.

[Elandru Moonshyne]

For some reason, I'm getting the following bug:

SendChatMessage(): Chat message must be in UTF-8 text.

...but only on one of my characters. I'm assuming it must be something about the status text WoW doesn't actually like, but it's never had a problem with it before.

The bug fires even when it's just MRP running. I'm not entirely sure when, yet, but it's right after it finishes joining both the channels, so I'd imagine during the RSP broadcast?

I'm going to try to figure out why. I don't think there's anything I'm doing here I'm not doing in my other characters, it's a bit of a mystery...

description:
"A young night elf woman with wavy green�blue hair tied back in a rough ponytail, whose cyan eyes sparkle with a feisty, mischievous sense of adventure � probably fuelled by whatever is contained in the cushioned malachite stone jug slung low from her belt.\n\nShe�s wearing dark�coloured chain�mail and a wrinkled black undershirt. A snug cloak apparently made from kaliri feathers is slung around her shoulders.\n\nHer dark gauntlets seem to have carefully�engineered faintly�glowing readouts on them. There�s a variety of smaller devices among her packs, and something vaguely gnomish clamped to a knothide�leather shot pouch with a chain of adamantite ammunition leading to her gun, which is currently holstered; a strong, well�maintained, well�balanced hunting rifle with a long and complex�looking farsight and a fearsome bayonet.", --

history:
"Elandru Moonshyne; the (unofficial) Matriarch of Moonshyne.\n\nHaving been summoned by an arcane ritual from the Lower City refugees in an alternate world ruled mainly by the Burning Legion, this is not quite the same, now�deceased Elandru many once knew � but she shares some familiar aspects.\n\nShe�s currently 304 years old; a young adult.\n\nShe uses a gun, and practices the gnomish art of engineering, with a bit of goblin mixed in. Some similarities with her deceased �mirror image�, however, remain; such as the recipe which gave the Moonshyne family its more infamous name.\n\nOriginally distilled and created by her long�dead grandmother, Celestiya Silvermoon (a.k.a. �Granny Moonshyne�), an infamous, tinkering herbalist with shady business connections, the elvish moonshine is now more widely known as Darkmoon Special Reserve and sold widely by the Darkmoon Faire.\n\nShe has no surviving family. It�s thought that the funds for the Moonshyne guild (her namesake � now official, though speculated to exist unofficially, under the table, for a long time) might come from the family fortune, or perhaps from the continued peddling of the recipe. Few know for sure, and they�re not telling.\n\nWith a keen, almost goblin�like business instinct, and a wild, untamed thirst for adventure � largely fuelled (it would appear) by the family recipe � she�s informal and unconventional. Quite a daring soul when she lets her hair down; a uniquely charming personality.\n\nIt�s been hinted that she will, however, do anything to protect her friends.", --

[Moncader]

Try replacing the \n's with actually pressing Enter... Just curious. (This shouldn't happen... might be a blizzard bug, also maybe it doesn't like the ascii codes we use in our messages to split the different parts of the message up? But it was fine before...

[Elandru Moonshyne]

That was pasted from the WTF; they are <Enter>s in the description itself.

Curiouser and curiouser; I've cut and pasted the description back and forth. Now it's perfectly happy. So it might indeed be a Blizzard bug, 'cause it only happened really recently.

Unfortunately that now means I can't reproduce the bug. *shrug* Oh well. I'll have to wait for someone else to bump into it. I can only assume that some kinda control code it didn't like went into there... U+FEFF or U+FFFE, perhaps?

[Moncader]

Sadly, it could be anything, corrupt data, anything.... UTF is implementation defined... Meaning Blizzard chooses which parts of UTF to support... So even if it's a 'valid' character... it might not be (or rather, a valid UTF character, but could be WAY high on the UTF list... meaning it probably doesn't have a display character). Either way, it shouldn't error... UTF is UTF, you should be able to use any of them And if your font supports it, good for you

I blame bliz.

[Elandru Moonshyne]

Bump: I know what it is.

The chat length limit is in bytes. All well and good, as LUA thinks in bytes and split it on bytes.

Unfortunately SendChatMessage is no longer 8-bit clean. It now demands<truncated sequences.

So if the middle of a multi-byte UTF-8 sequence, like the one that encodes "" or "<

• we encode all high bytes using a control sequence which it (and we) doesn't mind splitting; or
• (my preferred solution) we check for UTF-8 sequences ourselves when splitting and if we're in the middle of a multi-byte character sequence, pedal back to the beginning and split it before the sequence (making the multi-byte character the first of the next block).
  
  (If we're allowed to do that, that is, because the length won't be maximum, but I think that'll be OK because the destination MyComm still won't have received the number of bytes it was expecting; as far as I know, we can send smaller fragments and that should still be backwardly compatible.)

[Karp]

Hello, erm , im having the same error but didnt really get how you solved it.
Could anybody please say this for stupid people in easy words?

[Elandru Moonshyne]

If you’re still having this error please update to version 3.3.53 as you must be out of date. This was fixed a while back and I haven’t seen it reoccur.

[Karp]

Hm yea sure but im playing on a private server 

[Elandru Moonshyne]

Then that’s your problem; I can’t support you.

Real WoW servers are well–maintained, have lots of people on them, run a server that actually works properly, and aren’t seas of bugs; a private server really cannot ever compare.

I recommend giving the real World of Warcraft a try—if not now, perhaps when the next expansion Cataclysm comes out. But I understand some people are allergic to ongoing payments, even for a very well–maintained ongoing online gaming service. I certainly found I played enough it was worth the monthly on the entertainment alone, mind you.

Your choice, ultimately.

(Either way, thread locked.)