Strange symbol

[Shrike]

I'm trying to configure Serendipity 0.9.1 on my hosting. I use russian language and everything seems fine, except that letter "ш" in my postings always converts to some strange symbol (two ?? in Firefox and square with question mark in Opera). Same letter in menu shows fine. Yet calendar shows in English, but it's not so important as this letter. Can somebody help me?

[garvinhicking]

Are you using UTF-8 charset, or native charset? You should use UTF-8!

The problem with the calendar is that your system doesn't have the russian language locale as UTF-8 charset available; you'd need to contact your sysadmin to install this locale: ru_RU.utf-8

Are you using the WYSIWYG editor, or the simple one? Are you entering that special letter via your keyboard, or via copy+paste from another document?
Some native characters will be put wrongly into UTF-8 format, if pasted frmo another application, and some characters will be transformed from UTF-8 to a HTML Entity, depending on your browser and system's charset.

Best regards,
Garvin

[Shrike2]

I am using UTF-8, simple editor, entering special character via keyboard. My alphabet (cyrillic) has a few special characters, but only this cannot be displayed. I don't understand, why this one?

[Shrike]

In preview I see this character clearly. Maybe something's wrong with mysql?
I've tried to switch to WYSIWYG-editor, but it didn't help.

[garvinhicking]

Yes, it can mabe be a MySQL problem. Did you try to use phpMyAdmin to look at the serendipity_entries table and see if the character is in there properly?

Regards,
Garvin

[raab@home.se]

I've got a similar problem on my site at http://how.gnallspik.net/Razor. In the articles the åäöÅÄÖ of Swedish show up all right, but in the names of the days and months they are replaced by some strange characters.

[garvinhicking]

Actually that's not a similar problem

Your problem is related to the "locales" set up on your server. Probably you're using the UTF-8 charset ,but your provider does not have the swedish UTF-8 locale installed on his system.

Please talk to your sysadmin to install the swedish UTF-8 locale on the server.

Regards,
Garvin

[RavenH]

Hi,

I have a similar (the same?) problem. I'm also trying to set up the most recent version of Serendipity as a Russian (Cyrillic) blog and get empty rectangles where e.g. the Cyrillic letter S (c) would have to go, here is a sample of what is happening:



The MySQL database (4.1.13 standard, PHP is 4.4.0) is set to UTF-8 (UTF8_general_ci), PHPMyAdmin has the same settings.

I checked the database table, input in there - when I copy and paste it with and into Notepad++ will display correctly using all letters.

The error happens with entries, with the blog's title, with comments, the russian translation of the interface (both front and backend) isn't touched by this!

The bug/error appears when I look at the output on screen (pasting this into Notepad++ produces this error as well). It is irrelevant whether I use Russian or English setting on the blog, it is irrelevant whether I input using my RU keyboard setting or whether I paste from Notepad++, the error still gets transmitted, when viewing the result.

However, curious thing, when I get an email from the blog that a comment was added, the comment in the mail will display correct (and faultily on the screen when looking at it in the browser).

It's irrelevant what browser I use, both FF and IE correctly switch to UTF-8, then display the errors.

All this is happening on a shared host server, so I can't very much fiddle with MySQL itself, though that host will be friendly enough when nicely asked. I can apparently change settings for the tables through PHPMyAdmin, though. But I can't upload additional charsets. I noticed that while PHPMyadmin offers me an UTF8 russian collation, this isn't in evidence with MySQL collations (e.g. I can change to UTF8_unicode_ci and various others).

Any ideas how to solve this?

Oh, eventually the site should display a bilingual blog in English and Russian.

Greetings

RH

[garvinhicking]

What's your URL? And did you select "UTF-8" as the charset of your blog?

Regards,
Garvin

[RavenH]

Hi Garvin,

yes, of course the blog is set to UTF-8 (as per initial configuration during setup, and I checked that this kept and is true in config).

I'm sorry, but I'm not at liberty to disclose clients' URLs. However, if you tell me what you want to know, I'm sure I can provide the information you need.

What personally baffles me, I tried Textpattern, Spip and Website Baker (all UTF-8 capable) on same account and server before I installed Serendipity and they all had no problem displaying cyrillic letters, regardless of how the input took place. I just checked, the Spip installation is still in effect and still gives clean cyrillic when you input in the same manner as input happens with Serendipity.

I maybe need to add: I use the default installation of Serendipity, default skin, nothing extra installed except that which comes with the download itself.

Greetings

Raven

[garvinhicking]

Hm, I am sorry then, but without the actual URL I can not help much.

Please set up a testing installation on a public server so that I can see it.

All UTF-8 blogs I've seen so far on any mysql version work properly. It might be an issue of your default mysql charset client connection. You might want to try installing a recent snapshot of serendipity, which now issues a "SET NAMES" command to MySQL, if enabled in configuration of serendipity.

Regards,
Garvin

[RavenH]

Hi again,

well, then I'll have to drop Serendipity. There's just no question of allowing anyone access to a client server and software, except the client and myself. As an installation on one of my own servers wouldn't help, they aren't configured as the client's host server, this is useless too. Within configuration of this version of Serendipity there was no setting for "set names" or another setting. As I said, I used a standard installation, the only things relating to language I set were UTF-8 and the blog language settings.

A pity, as it appeared to be quite nice and easy to use, but compromising contracts sure isn't an option for me.

Greetings

Raven

[garvinhicking]

Did you read that I was talking about a TEST INSTALLATION? Just install the software somewhere else on a different virtual host with dummy texts, then I could look at it.

I am sure you understand that we cannot help anything if it is flawlessly working on our local installations.

The "Set names" setting is available in the nightly snapshots, as I mentioned.

I'm sorry for you, but you seem to want no help, then. If you change your opinion, we're still here for you.

Best regards,
Garvin

[RavenH]

Hi again,

now you entirely baffle me. Sorry, but I'm intrigued...

Just what should a test installation on a DIFFERENT shared host be able to show you?! It's a different host then, a different MySQL db, a different PHP version, a different thing alltogether. The installation wasn't on my own server, it's a simple account on a shared host, like there are a gazillion out there, standard for most normal clients. And every host company has its own setup, its own versioning and its own security measures. Usually not even two in that gazillion would even begin to compare.

I installed the latest stable release of Serendipity, without ANY addons, with a standardized installation, UTF-8 enabled, using your installer routine. Nothing else.

There's your "test version" on opensourcecms.org, it's the same software, installed on a 4.4.1 PHP, and it works as it should, the input works there as it should. Why should I reproduce such an installation?

What "nightly snapshots" are you talking about? I've not been running this installation longer than a few hours, saw that it didn't work as it should (full UTF-8 support and compliance is the first thing I test for this client, as Cyrillic-English is what she wants), asked here, got no pointer towards what this could be and lifted it off that server again.

Since then I installed Textpattern once more and yes, it still produces clean Cyrillic, even when using TinyMCE, as still does Spip, so I have to assume it's not the server or the database which has a problem there.

Of course I wanted help, but this should not include compromising confidances and contracts with clients. That's an absolute no-no, as a webmaster you don't go around and post client URLs in public forums or to people you don't know in the slightest, especially not at production stage. That's at least if you like your job and don't want a bad name.

Greetings

Raven

[judebert]

No one is asking you to compromise anything. In fact, please don't.

What we're saying is that, as a small, volunteer effort, we don't have the resources to test every combination of software in every possible version. Therefore we'll find it very difficult to debug your particular problem, since it works as expected on other, known installations (such as the "test version" on opensourcecms.org).

If you can provide us with simply these resources, we can debug your problem further. We've even got the lead developer standing by, waiting to help you out. All he wants is access to a setup demonstrating your problem.

If you want more comprehensive support, such as you acting as the programmer's hands and eyes, this is also available. But it's not free, because the inherent problems of communication make it so much more time-consuming and error-prone.

The "nightly snapshots" are the versions on our s9y.org downloads page that do not correspond to any stable release, but rather to a version built from the latest source. It's up-to-date, and may include a fix to your problem. It's another debugging datapoint.

The datapoint that Textpattern works properly may be of some use to us.

Thanks for trying out Serendipity. We're sorry your experience has been less than optimal. We'll use your posts to try and improve the product. We're willing to help you out, if you still want to continue. We just need some resources to create the path forward.

Good Luck!