Hi, I've been messing around with a game using a custom status pane that displays the alias of the room the player is current in and I had some interesting time with a couple of examples where the status would not display in the HTML and would just default to "---".
I just now figured out why it was doing this, the alias contained a hyphen character: '
How do I add an escape clause on that character when it is displayed in the HTML?

In the below example Room3 has a custom alias On Enter that contains a hyphen for testing purposes, from the start just go North East.

<!--Saved by Quest 5.7.6404.15496-->
<asl version="550">
  <include ref="English.aslx" />
  <include ref="Core.aslx" />
  <game name="TestRoomStatus">
    <gameid>0bae2a50-2560-4e7c-8016-02867de11bb8</gameid>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <firstpublished>2017</firstpublished>
    <feature_advancedscripts />
    <customstatuspane />
    <roomenter type="script"><![CDATA[
      oRoomObj = player.parent
      if (oRoomObj.name <> "Start") {
        if (HasAttribute (oRoomObj, "SpecialRoom")) {
          s = "<table width=\"100%\"><tr>"
          s = s + "   <td style=\"text-align:center;\" width=\"100%\"><span id=\"roomalias-span\">---</span></td>"
          s = s + " </tr>"
          s = s + "</table>"
          JS.setCustomStatus (s)
          if (HasScript(oRoomObj, "changedalias")) {
            do (oRoomObj, "changedalias")
          }
        }
      }
      if (HasScript(player, "changedalias")) {
        do (player, "changedalias")
      }
    ]]></roomenter>
    <start type="script"><![CDATA[
      foreach (room, AllObjects()) {
        if (room.name <> "Start") {
          if (HasAttribute (room, "SpecialRoom")) {
            room.changedalias => {
              // When a room's alias is changed, we change the status pane only if the player is in that room
              // Whether the if() line is necessary will depend on your gameplay, but it does no harm to include it
              if (Contains (this, player)) {
                JS.eval ("$('#roomalias-span').html('" + this.alias + "');")
              }
            }
          }
        }
        room.alias = "A Room"
      }
    ]]></start>
  </game>
  <object name="Building1">
    <inherit name="editor_object" />
    <object name="Room1">
      <inherit name="TheRoom" />
      <enter type="script">
        Room1.alias = "Room 1"
      </enter>
      <exit alias="east" to="Room2">
        <inherit name="eastdirection" />
      </exit>
      <object name="player">
        <inherit name="editor_object" />
        <inherit name="editor_player" />
        <alias>Player 1</alias>
      </object>
      <exit alias="northeast" to="Room3">
        <inherit name="northeastdirection" />
      </exit>
    </object>
  </object>
  <object name="Building2">
    <inherit name="editor_object" />
    <object name="Room2">
      <inherit name="TheRoom" />
      <enter type="script">
        Room2.alias = "Room 2"
      </enter>
      <exit alias="north" to="Room3">
        <inherit name="northdirection" />
      </exit>
      <exit alias="west" to="Room1">
        <inherit name="westdirection" />
      </exit>
    </object>
  </object>
  <object name="Building3">
    <inherit name="editor_object" />
    <object name="Room3">
      <inherit name="TheRoom" />
      <enter type="script">
        Room3.alias = "Room\' 3"
      </enter>
      <exit alias="south" to="Room2">
        <inherit name="southdirection" />
      </exit>
      <exit alias="southwest" to="Room1">
        <inherit name="southwestdirection" />
      </exit>
    </object>
  </object>
  
  <type name="TheRoom">
    <inherit name="editor_room" />
	<SpecialRoom type="boolean">true</SpecialRoom>
  </type>  
  
</asl>

//  I set up a listalias attribute for Room3.
if (HasAttribute(this, "listalias")) {     
  JS.eval ("$('#roomalias-span').html('" + this.listalias + "');") 
 }
else {
   JS.eval ("$('#roomalias-span').html('" + this.alias + "');")
}

<object name="Room3">
  <inherit name="TheRoom" />
  <enter type="script"><![CDATA[  
    // I made this section CDATA
    Room3.alias = "Room' 3"
// This sets the listalias attribute, which shows up in the pane.  &#39; is UTF-8 for '
    Room3.listalias = "Room&#39; 3"  
  ]]></enter>
  <exit alias="south" to="Room2">
     <inherit name="southdirection" />
  </exit>
  <exit alias="southwest" to="Room1">
    <inherit name="southwestdirection" />
  </exit>
</object>

https://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_basic_latin.asp

First up, names of characters. A hyphen is -. You mean an apostrophe, ' (or a single quote).

In that room, the actual javascript command that you're trying to execute on the client side is:

$('#roomalias-span').html('Room' 3');

I believe that when you've put

Room3.alias = "Room\' 3"

Quest already interprets a backslash (within a quoted string) as an instruction to take the next character literally; so \' puts a literal apostrophe into your room's alias.
If you put

Room3.alias = "Room\\\' 3"

then your room's alias would be Room\' 3 with a slash in, so the browser would be interpreting the command:

$('#roomalias-span').html('Room\' 3');

so the argument to the html() function is Room' 3. But that means your room has a backslash in the alias, and probably isn't ideal.

First suggestion:
Do you really need a literal ' apostrophe? My solution is normally to use ’ curly quotes, and reserve the plain quotes ' and " for programming.
For example, I can avoid escaping quotes by doing something like
msg ("“This,” the programmer yells, “is a very, very silly example!”")
because to both Quest and Javascript, curly quotes are just text characters to display to the user.

Method 2:

              if (Contains (this, player)) {
                escaped_alias = Replace(this.alias, "'", "\\'")
                JS.eval ("$('#roomalias-span').html('" + escaped_alias + "');")
              }

(sorry if there's errors in there, I can't get at Quest here so I'm answering off the top of my head)

Ah, ninja'd :p

Yep, mrangel's way is easier:

<enter type="script">
  //Lose the backslash
   Room3.alias = "Room' 3"
</enter>

<start type="script"><![CDATA[
   foreach (room, AllObjects()) {
    if (room.name <> "Start") {
      if (HasAttribute (room, "SpecialRoom")) {
        room.changedalias => {
          // When a room's alias is changed, we change the status pane only if the player is in that room
          // Whether the if() line is necessary will depend on your gameplay, but it does no harm to include it
          if (Contains (this, player)) {
            escaped_alias = Replace(this.alias, "'", "\\'")
            JS.eval ("$('#roomalias-span').html('" + escaped_alias + "');")
          }
        }
      }
    }
    room.alias = "A Room"
  }
]]></start>

NOTE: It displays Room' 3 in the pane every time you enter that room, but it says A Room in the text the first time, just like the other room does.

Great! Both methods work, and yes I realised I needed to keep the name separate from the true room alias attribute for good reason.

How, or should it be which, keys do you press for curly quotes. I feel such a fool for even asking such a basic question, but there we are 'FOOL'. (I'd've written that in curly quotes if I could find the #£*$%!#* key.)

jkl;'
Shift apostrophe. ' "

msg ("“This,” the programmer yells, “is a very, very silly example!”")

Those curly quotes. I know how to ' "

Sorry, I can't advise on how to type odd characters in Windows. That's one of the reasons I switched to using linux full-time a few years ago.

How, or should it be which, keys do you press for curly quotes. I feel such a fool for even asking such a basic question, but there we are 'FOOL'.

I was wondering this too, but didn't ask for the same reason.

https://practicaltypography.com/straight-and-curly-quotes.html

Using the ALT key:

"“”"

" “ ” "
" “ ” "

# " “ ” "

" “ ” "

Huh...

The last two show up correctly in the preview, but not after I post.

ok. thanks

K.V.
"“”" works fine. The later parts don't.
I don't know why you want to use those cursed quotation marks anyways...

jmnevil54,

Yeah, it works in some places, but not others. (I would say that's strange, but it's really par for the course.)

And I don't want to use them. I just wanted to know how to use them. (I'm a knowledge junkie.)

(filler to get my edited post, updated/posted)

it depends on the computer/keyboard... as to what characters/symbols you got...

some keyboards/computers don't have the non-curly apostrophies (like my own keyboard, lol).

usually though, there is a way to do most characters/symbols, as usually they're built into modern computers, but it's some weird command like using 'hold ALT + combination/sequence of keyboard keys' (see html and/or other ascii:originally_american+some_international and/or unicode:international, command patterns: http://www.asciitable.com or http://unicode.org/charts/ ), as KV showed already, or you have to go into the computer's keyboard controls/options/window/menu to get at the weird and/or international (other countries') keys/symbols, when you got a keyboard that doesn't have them as physical keys to press on it.

for my keyboard (apple laptop), I just have to hold down the 'OPTION/ALT' key, and here's the results of pressing various keys:

normal key: `1234567890-=
shift + key: ~!@#$%^&*()_+
option/alt + key: `¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–≠

normal key: qwertyuiop[]\
shift + key: QWERTYUIOP{}|
option/alt + key: œ∑´®†¥¨ˆøπ“‘«

normal key: asdfghjkl;'
shift + key: ASDFGHJKL:"
option/alt + key: åß∂ƒ©˙∆˚¬…æ

normal key: zxcvbnm,./
shift + key: ZXCVBNM<>?
option/alt + key: Ω≈ç√∫˜µ≤≥÷