Serious problem with latin extened characters in greek forums

[Trevor Hannant]

In phpinfo, is 'iconv' listed?

[dimitrios]

If you mean that I should check: AdminCP > Maintenance > View php info then, indeed, I see a "iconv" section with the following data:

iconv support 	enabled
iconv implementation 	glibc
iconv library version 	2.5

iconv.input_encoding	ISO-8859-1	ISO-8859-1
iconv.internal_encoding	ISO-8859-1	ISO-8859-1
iconv.output_encoding	ISO-8859-1	ISO-8859-1

Is that what you asked me about?

[dimitrios]

( have i answered to your question? )

[zoglair]

Can you try a quick & dirty solution?

Make a plugin to replace &amps; with the actual character, so that html entities are displayed correctly. Goto Plugins & Products menu, click Add New Plugin and enter values as per screenshot.

[we_are_borg]

Zachery, would you mind rephrasing your question, please? I don't understand what you are asking.

never mind to little time

[dimitrios]

Can you try a quick & dirty solution?

Make a plugin to replace &s; with the actual character, so that html entities are displayed correctly. Goto Plugins & Products menu, click Add New Plugin and enter values as per screenshot.

zoglair, from the little i understand i don't think that your proposed solution will work, once again, there is no convertion there. It is obvious, from your very first post, that you mean well but you don't really have understanding of what's going on here nor can you fix this.

This is a serious bug and the only solution will be a fix from the vb support or clear step by step instructions together with vivid support to convert my db to utf-8.

All the little things you propose, you mean well nevertheless it is obvious that they will only mess things worse if one was to try them out.

Greek to Greek, I hope you have come to realise by now that the one who is "not exactly on spot" there in your first post, is you. I appreciate your effort but this thing here is by far beyond your powers.

This is an issue that has been anticipated and it has caused a known bug.

No inspired solutions here or dirty tricks can work out.

The true unsurpassed problem is the reluctance of the support. Nine months with a messed forum and all I get is incomprehensive little questions now and then that I have to make out and answer so that I can get yet another such question after some days. Nothing is being really explained to me nor is anyone really looking into this.

[we_are_borg]

UTF-8 is also not 100% supported in vBulletin it self thats something thats on the to-do list of Fabian. The problem is only solvable by converting the database it self like i said in a few posts ago, vBulletin will not assist because they can't automate it to a point that its 100% successful. But even then you can have issues because vBulletin it self is not yet 100% UTF8 supported. This is really a big issue and for sites that use other than native Latin alphabet they solved a lot of issues but plenty remain on this issue.

[dimitrios]

The support in the ticket, next to leaving me helpless with the bug, has advised me to convert my db to utf8. Of course, with no support whatsoever.

[dimitrios]

At least a way for new special charaters to be treated correctly?

vb reads them, stores them and then shows them the wrong way...

[dimitrios]

connected users..

the "uknown location" problem together with the messed special characters.. what a sight! and there seems to be no end to it..



this is going on for almost a year..!

[we_are_borg]

Still having trouble Dimitrios with special characters even after all this time.

[dimitrios]

yes, it is just terrible.. i don't know what to do!

do you think i should venture to convert my db to utf-8? It seems like a colossal task and there is no support. What do you advice?

[we_are_borg]

Well i would test 1 or 2 times what will happen if you convert to utf-8 it will make your life easier but even so it will prevent a lot of issues but vBulletin is not 100% utf-8 orientated so some issues you will have trouble with. Converting is not that hard its only time consuming you need to backup database that backup will allow you to start converting after you done that import database into a new database setup test site and watch if it work if your happy close board and do it with live site.

[dimitrios]

i'll get to it, when i find some time..

my forum is totally messed up by this vbulletin shortcoming.. look for example this today's post where a member complaints about it:



Here's a translation:

Unfortunately, I see that the problem with the latin characters bearing special marks, remains unsolved... This is totally incomprehensive for me, firstly because this is something I would expect to happen only with old software, and secondly because these are very common letters in very widespread languages. In this post the a with an accent and the n with a tilde appear as "&#225" and "&#241" respectively, resulting the name of Alejandro González Iñárritu appear as semi-gibberish.



vb caused this.. posts look this bad for almost a year.. members complain. .and the support here won't support! thanks.

[George L]

Unfortunately, character set issues aren't entirely vB related as you may have been told as there's several levels of factors involved from mysql server, db, db table, db field, db data level. The responsibility is on the web host/server admin to ensure everything is set correctly. Just as if MySQL wasn't installed and configured correctly on the server that was intended to run vB, then it isn't vB's responsibility to install MySQL or properly configure it.

I am curious about your existing settings though. You can download this script at http://vbtechsupport.com/charset/vb/...arset_v0.03.sh i just wrote to grab everything you need to at least check you have most of the requirements correctly set for UTF8 or to see what you have currently set.

You'd need ssh2 telnet access to run the script and you can grab it all via ssh2

1. download file

wget [url]http://vbtechsupport.com/charset/vb/checkcharset_v0.03.sh[/url]

2. chmod it

chmod +x checkcharset_v0.03.sh

3. edit variables in checkcharset_v0.03.sh

# answer y or n 
# is MySQL version > 5.1.xx ?
MYSQLVER='y'

# your mysql server hostname set
# in vB config.php 
# $config['MasterServer']['servername'] =
MYSQLHOST='localhost'

# mysql username/password
MYSQLUSER='yourmysqlusername'
MYSQLPASS='yourmysqlpassword'

# your database name
# vB config.php
# $config['Database']['dbname'] = 
DBNAME='yourvb_databasename'

# if you set table prefix in vB config.php
# $config['Database']['tableprefix'] =
DBPREFIX=''

# vB config.php full path
# to find what you set
# in vB admincp > Language Manage -> Edit settings -> HTML Character Set
VBCONFIGPATH='/full/path/to/your/vbforum/includes/config.php'

# How to set POSTID
# find a post preferably with short text i.e. 1 or 2 lines of text
# which has incorrectly displayed characters or create a new post with
# 1 or 2 lines of mixed english and native charset of your forum text
# note the posts' postid i.e. postid = 1
POSTID='1'

4. run the script

./checkcharset_v0.03.sh > charsetinfo.txt

5. then in your forum support thread, post the info contained in charsetinfo.txt preferably in [CODE][/CODE] tags