SMF Support > SMF 2.0.x Support
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Johnny B:
--- Quote from: MrPhil on May 12, 2012, 11:00:08 AM ---It's hard to see what exactly the original quotation marks are/were, but it's likely that the quotation marks are Microsoft "Smart Quotes" and are invalid in many browsers. Depending on the browser, a Smart Quote might be interpreted as a control code, which could terminate the post at that point. It won't do any good to convert to UTF-8 (both database and page display and any non-English language files), but it won't hurt.
Since this is such a common problem (cutting and pasting text from MS Word), I've asked the SMF developers to put in code to scan for Smart Quotes characters and convert them to HTML entities. For the time being, all you can do is edit the posts to replace the Smart Quotes with standard ASCII characters or HTML entities. See my sig > projects > Change "Smart Quotes" for a complete list of Smart Quotes to look for.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the reply but that was copied to notepad first to remove all that then pasted to thread, not sure but that doesn't seem to be the problem. Not an expert but I was taught notepad does remove word coding. Am I wrong on that?
--- Quote from: Arantor on May 12, 2012, 10:34:33 AM ---It's those quote marks, they're invalid code under some circumstances.
Take a backup, then convert the forum to UTF-8 from the maintenance area.
--- End quote ---
I went to the "Convert the database and data to UTF-8" Section, there is a drop down menu to select options. Which option do I select?
Thank you
MrPhil:
--- Quote from: spinfactor on May 12, 2012, 02:17:45 PM ---I was taught notepad does remove word coding. Am I wrong on that?
--- End quote ---
Partially wrong. While cutting and pasting to Notepad (or, usually, anything done via Window's clipboard buffer) will remove the codes for italic, bold, etc., they will not translate "Smart Quotes" characters into other characters (e.g., standard ASCII). What happens is that you end up with single byte codes in your text that aren't valid in the encoding that SMF uses (typically either Latin-1 or UTF-8). Some browsers may fudge the results and display these particular characters as Smart Quotes characters under some encodings, but you can't count on it.
MrPhil:
--- Quote from: spinfactor on May 12, 2012, 02:17:45 PM ---I went to the "Convert the database and data to UTF-8" Section, there is a drop down menu to select options. Which option do I select?
--- End quote ---
Before you go and convert your SMF installation to UTF-8, you should be aware that if the root cause of your problem is that Smart Quote characters were cut and pasted in, it is highly unlikely that a conversion to UTF-8 will work. You might be able to successfully convert existing database entries (posts) to UTF-8 if you tell phpMyAdmin that the existing database is CP-1252 rather than Latin-1, but it will do nothing for you in the future the next time someone cuts and pastes in a Word document containing Smart Quotes.
Johnny B:
--- Quote from: MrPhil on May 12, 2012, 03:09:28 PM ---
--- Quote from: spinfactor on May 12, 2012, 02:17:45 PM ---I was taught notepad does remove word coding. Am I wrong on that?
--- End quote ---
Partially wrong. While cutting and pasting to Notepad (or, usually, anything done via Window's clipboard buffer) will remove the codes for italic, bold, etc., they will not translate "Smart Quotes" characters into other characters (e.g., standard ASCII). What happens is that you end up with single byte codes in your text that aren't valid in the encoding that SMF uses (typically either Latin-1 or UTF-8). Some browsers may fudge the results and display these particular characters as Smart Quotes characters under some encodings, but you can't count on it.
--- End quote ---
Thank you, I learned something here
--- Quote from: MrPhil on May 12, 2012, 03:14:03 PM ---
--- Quote from: spinfactor on May 12, 2012, 02:17:45 PM ---I went to the "Convert the database and data to UTF-8" Section, there is a drop down menu to select options. Which option do I select?
--- End quote ---
Before you go and convert your SMF installation to UTF-8, you should be aware that if the root cause of your problem is that Smart Quote characters were cut and pasted in, it is highly unlikely that a conversion to UTF-8 will work. You might be able to successfully convert existing database entries (posts) to UTF-8 if you tell phpMyAdmin that the existing database is CP-1252 rather than Latin-1, but it will do nothing for you in the future the next time someone cuts and pastes in a Word document containing Smart Quotes.
--- End quote ---
Gotcha, well this sounds far more difficult than my abilities. Besides, my past experience shows when you tinker with something that effects are none familiar to you the chances of a major screw-up are plentiful. Thanks, guess I'll live with this and hope members don't copy and paste. Shame
MrPhil:
Maybe someone should come up with a mod to sanitize cut and pasted Smart Quotes into HTML entities? This may involve creating a new BBCode tag to handle entities, e.g., [ent=laquo]. We can then nudge the developers to build this into the base product (hopefully not waiting until 2.1). There may be work going on for this already, and if not, I'll try to take a look at it this weekend.
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