Odd Characters

[dbotbyl]

When posting, odd characters are appearing after saving, like:
"?��" for a dash or an apostrophe.

I am also not able to post in Arabic without the same character problems happening.

On two of the blogs which were an earlier version of Serendipity, this is not a problem, but in the one that is the newer version, the problem is occurring.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Which serendipity version are you using, and in the global s9y configuration did you set the charset to UTF-8? Which language are you using in your personal configuration? Which database type and version are you using?

Also, check the state of the database option "Use database charsets", this can affect if special characters can be properly saved.

Regards,
Garvin

[dbotbyl]

I solved the problem with the odd characters with your suggestion referring to "use database charsets."

Arabic is still not functioning in version Serendipity 1.5.4 and PHP 5.2.13, however it works just fine in Powered by Serendipity 1.2 and PHP 5.2.13 which runs 2 of the 3 blogs. I use English as my personal language but the Arabic users have Arabic set as their language.

Any suggestions on how to get Arabic to function well in the later version?

Thanks.

[Timbalu]

Hi

Looking over the pond, I think in these days its a need to have bloggers posting in nativ arabic...

I am sorry I can't really help, but I think you need - as Garvin said - UTF8 everywhere
Have a look that the database is set to utf8 too.

Ian

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

After you enabled the charset option and the bad characters are fixed, did you create a new blogposting? The characters only get fixed for every internal serendipity language, it will not fix old blog postings. You'd need to re-edit those and save them again.

HTH,
Garvin