Ubuntu
apache2 package

Unreadable Characters

Asked by Edward L Frey

On or about 4/24/11 my web site displayed a diamond with a ? inside for many of the characters on a a page that showed the correct characters the prior day.

The next day those diamonds with ? were replaced with – and � for characters such as ; and - and ' and ".

I have used these characters in my web page on 4/26 and 4/27 and they are shown correctly.

Do you know what is going on? How do I get the only web pages fixed?

Thank You,

Ed

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mycae
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mycae (mycae) said : 		#1

Have you validated your webpage to ensure you are using the correct character set? It may be that the browser is trying to guess, and is getting it wrong.

http://validator.w3.org/

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Edward L Frey (edlfrey) said : 		#2

mycea,

Thanks for your comment. I guess my problem, which I did not explain in my original question, is why was everything OK on April 23 and then unreadable on April 24. I have subsequently gone to one of the pages with the problem and re-typed the correct characters and re-posted the web page. It now looks fine.
I was thinking that Ubuntu or Yahoo (my host) did something that may have caused this and was looking for an easy fix.

________________________________
From: mycae <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 4:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Question #154501]: Unreadable Characters

Your question #154501 on apache2 in Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apache2/+question/154501

mycae posted a new comment:
Have you validated your webpage to ensure you are using the correct
character set? It may be that the browser is trying to guess, and is
getting it wrong.

http://validator.w3.org/

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Revision history for this message
Best mycae (mycae) said : 		#3

You may have "fixed" the problem on your machine, but not addressed the actual underlying problem.

An update to your browser could alter the locale detection code, and could change the final rendering. If you are using firefox, you can change the character encoding that you use to view the page in view->Character encoding -- note this does NOT change the encoding for others, just on your machine for that page.

By placing in substitute characters, you may have fixed it for your encoding or for all encodings -- the end result may or may not be as or more broken than before.

You *must* specify the encoding you are using in your pages at all times -- the w3c validator I linked above will warn you if you have not done this correctly.

Revision history for this message
Edward L Frey (edlfrey) said : 		#4

Thanks mycae, that solved my question.