Question Marks in the Place of Foreign Characters

Comments about LibriVox? Suggestions to improve things? News?
harvey
Posts: 257
Joined: February 16th, 2006, 4:51 pm
Location: Idaho

Post by harvey »

Xander wrote:The thing that puzzles me is that ... it also worked in the past on Librivox.
It seems that it started a little over a week ago. I am puzzled.
Could it be something with the forum software??
I think Xander is on the right track.

Looking at the HTML page source for the thread Xander lists in the first
post above, the Content-Type is declared as 8859:

Code: Select all

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
However, I ran this page through the W3C HTML Validation Service.
By default, it auto-detects the character encoding, and the Validator says
the encoding is UTF-8.

Web server software sends information about a document to the browser
before it sends the document itself. The Validator result tells me that the
LibriVox Web server is declaring the encoding of forum Web pages to be
UTF-8, which overrides the Content-Type declaration inside the HTML of
the Web page (at least in the Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape family of browsers).
PHP allows the sending of such document information.

I ran the home page and a page from the wiki through the Validator:
they also auto-detect as UTF-8.

This suggests it's system-wide on the LibriVox Web server, not just with phpBB.
Last edited by harvey on September 1st, 2006, 9:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
Xander
Posts: 200
Joined: May 27th, 2006, 5:29 pm

Post by Xander »

fae wrote: I heard a rumor that it blocks spy-ware too.

True?
Spyware is software that is installed on your machine that calls back to the maker with personal info about you. Only training yourself not to open email attachments or download files from unreliable sources can prevent that.

However, Firefox extensions can provide you with some tools to help keep yourself safe.
No Script
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/
McAfee SiteAdvisor
http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ff_preinstall.html

If you would like more information about Internet security try the Security Now! podcast by Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson. It is where I learned most of my stuff.
http://www.twit.tv/SN

By the way, Steve Gibson is the man who came up with the term Spyware.
-Xander

"Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."

www.zamws.com
a.r.dobbs
Posts: 3210
Joined: February 23rd, 2006, 1:04 am
Location: Boston

Post by a.r.dobbs »

I'm so glad this has come up. Same experience --though I see squares instead-- and I'm on Opera.

Has to be the site. Thanks Harvey for the research! Let's get this fixed. Yeah! I'm going to go tug the proper sleeves about it.
:D
Anita
fae
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Joined: July 15th, 2006, 4:29 pm
Location: Sunny & Bug-ridden Florida, USA

Post by fae »

Thanks a lot Xander and Anita! 8)
Xander
Posts: 200
Joined: May 27th, 2006, 5:29 pm

Post by Xander »

fae wrote:Thanks a lot Xander and Anita! 8)
Does this mean that you have seen the light and will now move away from the Dark side of the Force? :hmm:
-Xander

"Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."

www.zamws.com
fae
Posts: 658
Joined: July 15th, 2006, 4:29 pm
Location: Sunny & Bug-ridden Florida, USA

Post by fae »

Quite possibly!! Haven't finished reading raynr's suggestions though!

Oh and I meant to say:

Thanks to raynr!

Sorry to have confused you with Anita, bet that doesn't happen often?
Xander
Posts: 200
Joined: May 27th, 2006, 5:29 pm

Post by Xander »

fae wrote:Quite possibly!!
:9: :clap: :mrgreen:
-Xander

"Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."

www.zamws.com
fae
Posts: 658
Joined: July 15th, 2006, 4:29 pm
Location: Sunny & Bug-ridden Florida, USA

Post by fae »

Change that 'Quite possibly' to: ASAP!

:D
Cloud Mountain
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Joined: June 30th, 2006, 8:42 pm
Location: Jersey Shore, N.
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Post by Cloud Mountain »

(ISO 8859-1) works fine if you select a font that has those characters.

áéíóúàèìòùñõäëïöüÁÉÍÓÚÀÈÌÒÌÄËÏÖÜøØ...

I can even have my name in Japanese in my Signature with unicode.
[url=http://librivox.org/newcatalog/people_public.php?peopleid=254]Alan's LV catalog[/url]
ceastman
Posts: 4195
Joined: December 28th, 2005, 8:36 pm
Location: Redwood City, CA

Post by ceastman »

And (unsurprisingly) your Chinese bit turns into gobbledygook when I look at it with Western encoding.

Thanks again everyone for the quick fix!

-Catharine
earthcalling
Posts: 6604
Joined: April 8th, 2006, 2:26 pm
Location: London, England

Post by earthcalling »

ZachBG wrote:This has also been happening with Safari on Mac OS X. It definitely happened recently, and it's definitely only LibriVox.
Same here. Sheesh!
DSayers
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Location: Modesto, California (near Yosemite)
Contact:

Post by DSayers »

Yeah, I agree, this is a real pain in the neck. LV, as a world-wide collaboration, really needs to be able to display accents. And it's not only accents, even apostrophes are "questionable."

Started just about one week ago.

-denny
[u][url=http://tinyurl.com/MyLVReadings][color=purple][size=84]Projects Completed & In Progress[/size][/color][/url][/u].
Cloud Mountain
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Joined: June 30th, 2006, 8:42 pm
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Contact:

Post by Cloud Mountain »

DSayers wrote:Yeah, I agree, this is a real pain in the neck. LV, as a world-wide collaboration, really needs to be able to display accents. And it's not only accents, even apostrophes are "questionable."

Started just about one week ago.

-denny
IT DOES display accents AND foreign langauged. We just have to put together a definitive list of what works and what doesn't and post it as such. I can list wheta my setting are with all European diacritics AND Japanese and Chinese ALL working perfectly, as they are here on this Topic's pages.

Mac OS X
Firefox
Default Character Encoding: Westerm (ISO-8859-1)

Make sure your Western Fonts HAVE the diacritics (if the font doesn't, you'll get question marks)
Do the same for each Fonts for: Language
[url=http://librivox.org/newcatalog/people_public.php?peopleid=254]Alan's LV catalog[/url]
Xander
Posts: 200
Joined: May 27th, 2006, 5:29 pm

Post by Xander »

Cloud Mountain wrote:(ISO 8859-1) works fine if you select a font that has those characters.

áéíóúàèìòùñõäëïöüÁÉÍÓÚÀÈÌÒÌÄËÏÖÜøØ...

I can even have my name in Japanese in my Signature with unicode.
With Unicode these characters look fine. That is aeiou with various diacritical marks.

With Western they look like capital A with a diacritical mark alternating with goobldygook.

That is my problem. Everything else is confusing me a little.
-Xander

"Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."

www.zamws.com
Cloud Mountain
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Contact:

Post by Cloud Mountain »

Try a different font. Often it's the font that does not have the diacritics. What font do you have your browser set to?
[url=http://librivox.org/newcatalog/people_public.php?peopleid=254]Alan's LV catalog[/url]
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