Character encoding changed between B2 and B3???

[karlake]

I have one forum based on Beta2 and just installed another based on Beta3. Got one problem with the character encoding. In beta2 it works just fine with our Swedish characters and if one looks at the source of the pages it says:

"<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />"

If I look at the source from the beta3 it says:
"<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />"

Why the difference and what shall I do to fix it?

[david63]

Why have you still gor beta 2 installed?

To fix your problem delete beta 2.

[karlake]

Why have you still gor beta 2 installed?

To fix your problem delete beta 2.

I don´t see why that should be any problem with 2 forums. They have separate databases and are in separate directories on the webserver. Guide me, please!

[david63]

Beta 2 has been superceded by beta 3 and therefore should not be needed for testing - or are we talking about a live forum here?

[karlake]

Beta 2 has been superceded by beta 3 and therefore should not be needed for testing - or are we talking about a live forum here?

No not live forums, but I did some work on the B2-forum and have not had the time to make any documentation of that yet. Was going to have it running for a while before I delete it. How could that have effect on the B3-forum?

I can mention that I have five other forums running on the same server (version 2.xx). Those are is live forums with many tenthousands of posts.

[Raul Duke]

From the topic at the top called "Please read before posting".

UTF-8 Support

The decision to support UTF-8 (prior to a long period of discussing and evaluating) was made due to other problems we encountered and which would have taken longer to properly fix than introducing UTF-8. We know that this is not normal during beta phases and represents a drastic change, therefore this Beta release; to test the new functionality because it basically affects every single area of the software.

We encourage you to test with User names like ťĕsťůsĕř or ťĕsťůs'ĕř (note the single quote) to spot problems better. People already using UTF-8 encoding for their language packs should report every single problem they encounter.

[John Hjorth]

karlake,

Is your question releated to a Swedish language package under development ?

[karlake]

karlake,

Is your question releated to a Swedish language package under development ?

No eventually not. I was just puzzled when my browser couldn´t show our Swedish characters for example in the Sitenamn and Site description (and in posts). I don´t understand why? Worked well in Beta2 and I was surprised when it did not in Beta3!

If I had the time I surely would like to make a Swedish language pack, but I´m afraid it is to hope for too much if I made any promises about that. I have translated another forum many years ago and it takes a lot of time.

Back to my questions. How would it change anything if I deleted the Beta2-forum as suggested? Please explain!

[John Hjorth]

Naturally, it does not.

I might be server setup related, try upload a .htaccess to your root on server for your Beta 3 board containing the line :

Code: Select all

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

[karlake]

Naturally, it does not.

I might be server setup related, try upload a .htaccess to your root on server for your Beta 3 board containing the line :

Code: Select all

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

I run my forums on a Windows2003-server. I think .htaccess only is for Apache servers. There must be something else in this case

[John Hjorth]

Yes you are right, .htaccess is only for Apache servers. Hopefully someone else will contribute in this topic.

[SHS`]

I have one forum based on Beta2 and just installed another based on Beta3. Got one problem with the character encoding. In beta2 it works just fine with our Swedish characters and if one looks at the source of the pages it says:

"<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />"

If I look at the source from the beta3 it says:
"<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />"

Why the difference and what shall I do to fix it?

There is nothing to do to "fix it" per se since betas should not be used in a live environment, however... to eliminate user error from an actual edge-case regression bug within phpBB3 Beta3 due to the encoding switch, at the very least go through the following list:

1. Is the Beta3 install a fresh install? (Overwriting files of a Beta2 install yet pointing it to an existing Beta2 DB will not work, due to collation changes)
2. On a phpBB3 Beta3 clean install, though the source obviously says "UTF-8" is the character encoding, what does your browser detect it as? Your browser may for some reason be forced to ISO-8859-1 and thus render everything else incorrectly.
3. Does your PHP config for some reason force a particular encoding, breaking any attempt at set a different encoding (eg: UTF-8)? This may be why encoding detection by browsers are broken, since the explicit HTTP header may override the equivalent http-equiv within the HTML.
4. How did you transfer the files to the dev site, is your FTP client for sopme strange reason changing the encoding of files?
5. etc...

[arod-1]

Naturally, it does not.

I might be server setup related, try upload a .htaccess to your root on server for your Beta 3 board containing the line :

Code: Select all

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

usually a bad idea.
since all the phpbb pages define the charset within the page, it is best to run without defaultcharset.
it is, however, a good idea to have

Code: Select all

AddDefaultCharset Off

in case the defaultcharset was defined in a higher level (httpd.conf or higher level .htaccess)

[John Hjorth]

arod-1,

I agree, the server setup should be able to handle it. It was meant as a suggestion for a temporary workaround untill the server setup was changed correctly.

[karlake]

There is nothing to do to "fix it" per se since betas should not be used in a live environment, however... to eliminate user error from an actual edge-case regression bug within phpBB3 Beta3 due to the encoding switch, at the very least go through the following list:

1. Is the Beta3 install a fresh install? (Overwriting files of a Beta2 install yet pointing it to an existing Beta2 DB will not work, due to collation changes)
2. On a phpBB3 Beta3 clean install, though the source obviously says "UTF-8" is the character encoding, what does your browser detect it as? Your browser may for some reason be forced to ISO-8859-1 and thus render everything else incorrectly.
3. Does your PHP config for some reason force a particular encoding, breaking any attempt at set a different encoding (eg: UTF-8)? This may be why encoding detection by browsers are broken, since the explicit HTTP header may override the equivalent http-equiv within the HTML.
4. How did you transfer the files to the dev site, is your FTP client for sopme strange reason changing the encoding of files?
5. etc...

1. It´s a fresh installation, new database and new directory
2. According to PHP information:
   _SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET"] ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
   _ENV["HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET"] ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
   default_charset no value
3. I have my server on my own internal network and used copy&paste to transfer the files
   
   and furthermore:
4. Windows server 2003 with IIS 6
5. MS SQL 2000 with Server collation:SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
6. PHP Version 5.0.4

Need anymore information? Let me know!