Sounds like you should submit an RSE on this. If that works, then great.

Of course, my opinion is that you should not have spaces or special characters in your web directory structure given the fact that this is not Internet standard anyway. If your directory naming is loose like this, even if Windows allows it, then you might be loose in the rest of the web site. Some browsers do ok with spaces and special characters in a URL and others do not. So I would personally see that people still to best practices, not just what MS decides to allow.

Of course, trying to protect against a possible issue makes a lot of sense and so we should submit your suggestion above to help cover the issue.

Beau A.C. Harbin
Consulting Manager
Advanced Solutions International

I don't know of a method to submit an RSE, only an SMR, then hope Tech Support decides it should become an RSE.

Naturally, I try to keep spaces out of the web-accessible directories. From my experience, most people don't go creating many new directories inside the site, either. If they do, they soon learn spaces are evil.

The OS understands parent paths outside the site which include spaces, so it makes sense that eCM should too.

On the other hand, if the site has been running for months or years in a path with a parent with a space, it's Evil to tell a customer they must now rebuild their whole site to use Verity.

P.S. I know some people who believe the virtual path should never match the physical path, and including spaces in the parent directory, or the directory being virtually-included into the site is, to them, a security measure.

You can submit to the SMR system an RSE (Request for Software Enhancement). This is for something that is not technically a bug in the product, but could be a suggestion for how to improve it.

One final thing to keep in mind is that the batch file itself is not encrypted and so you could try this change if you ran into it with a client. However, you will need to make sure this change is clearly documented so it will not be missed in a later upgrade that might replace this file.

Beau A.C. Harbin
Consulting Manager
Advanced Solutions International

I absolutely could, but clients don't want to (a) pay for my time to make a change I've already made for every other client, or (b) hear that ASI hasn't fixed it, even though they know how.

Yeah, I know, we're talking about one tiny little batch file. The problem is, every implementation gets a little bigger because of all these "little, insignificant" things that have to be remembered. Five extra minutes, times how many installs of eCM, times an average of maybe $150 an hour adds up to...?

A good part of my job, and the value we bring to the client, is the ability to keep track of all these little necessary tweaks, both for implementation and upgrades. At the end of the day, I'd rather spend my time building new stuff than fixing old stuff. Especially old stuff that has been broken (design flaws, not bugs) since iMIS W.

Maybe your SMR form shows an RSE option, but mine doesn't. I guess I just say it's an RSE?

-- Bruce

This whole post was to have something to keep in mind in case there was an issue. In the end, I doubt this is a very big deal. In the years I have been implementing CM, I have only come across the problem twice. Both times, they were very quickly and easily fixed by removing the spaces and rerunning the wizards.

When I submit an RSE in the SMR system, I note in the subject like RSE:... and make it clear in the description this is a request for software enhancement.

Good luck

Beau A.C. Harbin
Consulting Manager
Advanced Solutions International

Ah, I'm not the only one working late. :)

Sorry if I came off making too big a deal about this. You're right - generally it's not a big deal. Most people use good habits and don't realize they dodged a bullet. I guess some of this might be the difference in perspective between new installs and add-on installs? Hard to say.

SMR/RSE is filed. Hopefully it'll get thrown in .04, and we can think about more exciting stuff.

-- Bruce