Imported MT Entries Wacky

I tried some archives on your blog, but could not find any entries with the said problem.
Can you provide us with a post with this problem, as an example?

https://www.jimlynch.com/blog/index.php?p=346
Try that one. There are a lot more on too. Somehow extra line breaks got stuck in and now it’s breaking a lot of links and graphics. And screwing up some entries.

My first guess is that it could be a problem with the import.txt that you got when you exported the MT entries. Maybe the text editor you used to save the entries added the extra linebreaks in.
An empty line in import.txt is interpreted by WP as a new paragraph. When the content is rendered, the autop filter, among others takes care of formatting. autop interprets an empty line as a paragraph, andintroduces the line breaks. Could you, by any chance provide me with the portion of the mt export file that had the post that you just linked to? I am sorry if this is a bother for you, but that sure will clarify a few things.

Sure, here it is:
——–
AUTHOR: Jim
TITLE: Timothy Treadwell: Bear “Expert” Devoured By Bears
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
CONVERT BREAKS: 0
ALLOW PINGS: 1
PRIMARY CATEGORY: Animals & Wildlife News
CATEGORY: Animals & Wildlife News
DATE: 10/09/2003 12:25:53 AM
—–
BODY:
Sometimes people do things so incredibly inane and
stupid
that it makes me wonder how our species has survived on this planet for
so
long. I remember seeing Treadwell’s “Grizzly Diaries” on TV and
thinking to myself that he was eventually going to get taken by one of
the
bears he got so close to. And that’s exactly what happened.
We now have
two
dead human beings and two dead bears. And for what? Nothing except
the
self-promoting vanity and self-deceiving delusions of a man who
apparently had nothing better to do
with his
life than harass wild animals that really wanted nothing more than to
be left
alone.
—–
EXTENDED BODY:
There’s more to this story, unfortunately, though. Treadwell’s death is
indicative of two dangerous trends. The first is the tendency of stars
of
nature documentaries and television programs to try to get as close as
physically possible to dangerous animals and the second is the
anthropomorphization
of wild animals by animal rights advocates. <br>
<br>
Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) was probably the first TV show host
to get
recklessly close to dangerous animals and there’s been a succession of
other
animal TV shows that have followed in his footsteps (Jeff Corwin,
O’Shea,
etc.). While the audience might find what these guys do entertaining,
they set
a very dangerous example for their viewers (especially the young and
impressionable ones). <br>
<img
border=”0″ src=”https://www.jimlynch.com/images/treadwell.jpg”&gt;<br>
<span style=”font-style: italic;”>Treadwell: Reckless, dangerous and
now dead.</span><br>
<p class=”MsoNormal”>Timothy Treadwell was certainly one of the more
foolhardy of this breed
of nature
documentary star but I doubt he will be the last. Even some scientist
types
have started imitating these guys by trying to get close to dangerous
animals.  Remember the idiot that had
href=”https://www.jimlynch.com/blog/archives/000020.html”>his calf
ripped off by
a bull shark? He was playing the same game as Treadwell, Irwin and
the rest
– using animals as props to attain media attention and funding. His
gambit with
the bull sharks nearly cost him his life, he almost bled to death after
his
calf was bitten off by the shark.<br>
<br>
If you watch Treadwell’s shows you will notice him saying “I love
you” and making other inane remarks as he gets close to wild bears
(MSNBC.com has a report with
href=”https://www.msnbc.com/m/mw/mw.asp?t=V&id=nn_morrison_bear_031008&sk=&pl=&name=cov%20er&opt=0″>video
footage of Treadwell in action).
It’s
simultaneously nauseating and mind-blowing to see a human being with so
little
regard for his own life and so little respect for the animals he claims
to
love. It’s as though he’s lost in some kind of fantasy world where he’s
“special” and “different” from the rest of us and thus able
to walk among wild animals without worry of being attacked. <br>
<br>
He comes across as
totally
out to lunch about the *reality* of what he’s doing and where he is.
Even his photos
contain cutesy names for the bears such as “Holly Bear” or
“Taffy Bear.” One can’t help but wonder what went wrong in
Treadwell’s life that could produce such an infantile perception of
dangerous
predators. Or perhaps it’s just more evidence of the “Disney-ification”
of our society. We seem to have become so cut off from nature that some
of us
have lost all sense of reality.
<img alt=””
title=”” src=”https://www.jimlynch.com/images/treadwellbearphoto.jpg&#8221;
style=”border: 0px solid ; width: 240px; height: 360px;”><br>
<span style=”font-style: italic;”>Does this look like a predator that
should be named “Winston Cubby Bear” to you?</span><br>
<p class=”MsoNormal”>The tendency to treat animals as if they are
humans is demeaning and
dangerous
to both species. It has the potential to condition foolish human beings
to risk
their lives and the lives of others in futile attempts at being
accepted into
“animal society” and it takes away from the natural respect due to
all large predatory animals. Wild bears are not humans with fur. They
will never
“know” us nor will they ever “like” us. They are not
created for that and they do not have the capacity to learn to be
civilized or
to interact on the level of a human being. We can and should admire
them but only from a respectful distance. We should never intrude into
their physical space. If we do so, we do so at our peril and also at
theirs. <br>
<p class=”MsoNormal”>It’s utterly absurd that I even had to write those
last few sentences
but there
are people out there who can’t seem to accept the reality of wild
predators. And reality is the key word here, folks. Some of us just
don’t seem
to live in it sometimes. Timothy Treadwell was a man who tried to
ignore the
reality of what wild bears are and that decision ultimately cost him
and his
girlfriend their lives. <br>
<br>
As
href=”https://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031009/ap_on_re_us/bear_attack_5″>more
details of the attack are released via an audiotape that was
recovered from
the camp site, we see that Treadwell finally and horribly came face to
face
with the reality of what a wild bear is. Let’s just hope that his
fellow TV
adventurers and the general public learn something from these needless
deaths.
The irony here is that Treadwell’s foolishness didn’t just cost his own
life;
it also cost the lives of two of the bears he claimed to love.

Note that I used Mozilla to save the text file.

Jim,
There is something wrong with the text editor you used to save/edit the file, if you used one.
If you used Mozilla’s (or any other browser’s) “save file as” feature, then it’s either a problem with MT, or the browser that caused the text to have all these extra linebreaks.
By looking at what you have posted above, I can see that there are unneccesary linebreaks in the file, and WP treated them as such. So it is not the import-mt.php’s fault.
Now, the best option when exporting the entries from MT, is to let it export to a Moz Browser, and then copy (select all) and paste into wordpad, and save it as a txt file. Notepad sometimes bungles up line breaks, though not all the time.
Can you please try the export again, this time taking care to see if this post still display the way it has, above? If it still behaves/display the way it is above, then it is a problem related to the MT exporter.
I understand your frustration. Please do not think that I am trying to say it is not wordpress’ fault in an unreasonable way ??

Oh no, don’t worry. I’m not blaming WP. I’m not mad or anything. So no worries there. ??
Let me try the export again.

You know I think the stupid export thing in MT is screwed up. No matter which browser I use to do it I still have those weird line breask.
Is there a way to just strip them out of the import.txt file?

You will have to strip all the linebreaks out and then you will have a pudding of sentences, which won’t make sense.
Can you identify any particular characteristic of the posts that show this behavior that might be causing this?
I never heard of anyone having this problem is why I am curious enough to see the reason ??

I don’t know. One thing that might be relevant is that I used Mozilla’s Composer to create most of these posts. Perhaps that has something to do with it?

This is very odd. I don’t know what to do about it. When I do the export from MT, that is what I get. I tried it with IE and Firefox and still got the same situation.
Darn. I have about five hundred entries. Too many to fix by hand. ??

Then most of the posts must be broken the same way.
Besides, if MT displayed these posts correctly
a. There must have been a problem with MT ignoring line breaks!
or
b. MT screwing up by putting linebreaks only when exporting the posts.
You could search the MT support forums for an answer. ??

I’ll check that out, thanks. Thank you for trying to help.

My pleasure! Please do let me know what turned up, if it’s not too much of a bother.
mail at carthik dot net is the address.

Saw this post and thought I’d help you and help myself at the same time :p I’ve written a new script to import from MT to WP that does not use the export feature. Instead, it imports directly from the database. If you use mySQL in your MT install, then the script would work for you. I’ve already used it to import my MT install to WP and it worked fine for me. I’d like to see if it would work for you since if it doesn’t, I’d like to improve the script to the point where it does work for you. You can get the script from https://www.farook.org/mt2wp.phps