Some text conflict with the editor, then text appears weird

[jfnoubel]

Hi,

I am editing a post in my that has some technical stuff in it, I mean some command lines to enter in console mode or instruction for the crontab in linux. No html tags in it, just some weird text.

For some reason the result that gets displayed makes some * (stars) disappear. I also find bold text where I didn't put it. It seems the odd things happen with the use of the '*' (star) character...

I have checked and cleaned the html tags, but it changed nothing. It seems that some text creates conflict with the editor, but I don't know what and why.

I use Serendipity 1.2.

Unfortunately I can't post it on my blog to show you because the vanishing of some '*' characters would mistaken the readers.

Below is the html text I am trying to enter in the main field of the post. You may try to cut/past it into your own blog field and check if you get the same odd thing.

Thanks!

----

<h2>4. Edit the crontab</h2><p>The crontab is the file made to program events in Linux. In console mode, type:</p><pre> kdesu kate /etc/crontab</pre><p>Then add this at the bottom:</p><p><table cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" border="1" align="center" style="width: 80%;"><tbody><tr><td style="width: 100%;">
<pre>#xplanet</pre>
<pre>14 */3 * * * root perl /home/jf/bin/download_clouds.pl 2&> /dev/null</pre>
</td></tr></tbody></table>
</p>
14 means it will be activated at x hour and 14 minutes. It is recommended that you don't download the cloud image at 00 minutes in order to avoid traffic. It is likely that many scripts do a download at regular hours, which may slow down the process and overload the servers.<br/></p><p>
*/3 means the download image perl script will be activated every 3 hours. Don't do it every hour, this is useless and it over uses the servers.</p><p>
* is for dom (day of month). A * means everyday</p><p>
* is for mon (month) -- this value has to be between 1-12, a * means any value, i.e. any month</p><p>
* is for dow (day of week) -- between 0 and 7, 0 being Sunday. A * means any day.</p><p>
root is because the user doing the action has to be 'root'</p><p/>
perl /home/jf/bin/download_clouds.pl 2&> /dev/null is the command line we would type in a terminal, as root (it should then begin with sudo)</p><p>The crontab can also be edited in graphic mode with KCron but I haven't tried it yet.</p><p/><h2>5. Configure the back screen</h2><p>This last step can easily be done in graphic mode. </p><p>Go to your desktop, do a right click on the background desktop image and select 'Configure Desktop...'. This launches the KDesktop application where the wallpaper and screen saver applications can be selected and configured.</p><p>Unselect the wallpaper (click on 'none' radio button).</p><p>Then click on advanced options button.</p><p>Select 'modify' xplanet.</p><p>In both command fields, type: </p><pre> xplanet --latitude 42 --longitude 2 --geometry %xx%y --num_times 1 --output %f.jpg && mv %f.jpg %f</pre><p>Then save.</p><p>Later on you can play with these settings, specialy the 'latitude' and 'longitude' ones to set whatever place you want to see the weather from.</p><p>And now one last thing: launch the perl script once in order to see the results immediatly (and not have to wait for the crontab to do the job at preset schedules). In console mode, do:</p><pre> sudo perl ~/bin/download_clouds.pl</pre><p></p><p/><p><font size="4">Enjoy the result!</font></p><hr width="100%" size="2" /><br />
<p>Sources I used:<br /><br />
* <a href="http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">xplanet</a> home site<br />
* <a href="http://nguild.org/tiki-index.php?page=Xplanet" target="_blank">Mose's site</a> (French)</p><p/>

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Check which markup plugins you have installed. If you're using the "Serendipity Markup" plugin, this is the one that replaces text with asterisk to mark bold text. If you don'T need that markup, you should delete that specific plugin.

Regards,
Garvin