'Foreign' characters - Post ID 189954

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I have a website that is very heavy on foreign characters -- mostly French and some German -- and in using Word documents as the basis of my pages, I find that these characters translate into weird character strings when viewed in a browser. For example, a grave 'e' (è) comes out as Ã?.

The real problem with this is that the HTML editor doesn't seem inclined to correct the issue with the search & replace option. If I put the è character (which is how it appears in the coding) into the 'find' box
and put è in the replace box, all that happens is that the è is replaced with è in the coding as a literal string, and it appears that way when viewed in the browser.

Any suggestions on this problem?
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When you say 'in using Word documents as the basis of my pages', does that mean that you convert a Word document into html? If that is so, no wonder that you have problems with non-English characters.

What you need to do is creating your html document in the HTML Editor, and if you use doctype html5 with charset utf-8, you can in most cases type the foreign characters as they come. I use a lot of German myself, and all the 'Umlaut' letters can be typed in directly. Don't remember if that is the case with 'sz' too, though. I don't use French, so I can't speak about any experience there, but the html5/utf-8 combination works very well also for Scandinavian languages, and we also have a couple of 'weird' characters (æøå).

Also, make sure that you have the newest version of the html Editor. There has just been a new release yesterday, and you know, if you have bought it once, all the updates are free.
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


User 466288 Photo


Registered User
5 posts

The version of CoffeeCup HTML editor is 12.6 rel. 448.

Yes, the foolishness of using text created in Word as the basis for my website is now apparent, but recoding the whole shooting gallery would be onerous, and I am wondering why employing the find & replace facility in CoffeeCup doesn't appear to work.
User 2287960 Photo


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What I have done in the past when say è does not display correctly is to find another è from somewhere else, copy and paste that in. Quite often that will work.


Keith
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Patrick, does 'the whole shooting gallery ' mean a picture gallery? A Word document in which you have placed images? If images in a word document are placed on the web, the quality of those images will be very poor.

I'm checking into the find/replace thing. Bear in mind that if you want to replace all instances of say
src="winter/winter3.jpg" width="490"
with something else, it won't find instances that are spread over two lines, like
src="winter/winter3.jpg"
width="490"
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


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'the whole shooting gallery ':)
aka
'the whole ball of wax',
'the whole nine yards',
'the whole box of dice',
'the whole shooting match',
'the whole enchilada',
'the whole kit and caboodle'
'the whole page'.;)
I can't hear what I'm looking at.
It's easy to overlook something you're not looking for.

This is a site I built for my work.(RSD)
http://esmansgreenhouse.com
This is a site I built for use in my job.(HTML Editor)
https://pestlogbook.com
This is my personal site used for testing and as an easy way to share photos.(RLM imported to RSD)
https://ericrohloff.com
User 122279 Photo


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Ok then. These various expressions have to be explained to a clueless foreigner... :P
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


User 1948478 Photo


Senior Advisor
1,850 posts

Patrick Kearney wrote:
I have a website that is very heavy on foreign characters -- mostly French and some German -- and in using Word documents as the basis of my pages, I find that these characters translate into weird character strings when viewed in a browser. For example, a grave 'e' (è) comes out as Ã?.

The real problem with this is that the HTML editor doesn't seem inclined to correct the issue with the search & replace option. If I put the è character (which is how it appears in the coding) into the 'find' box
and put è in the replace box, all that happens is that the è is replaced with è in the coding as a literal string, and it appears that way when viewed in the browser.

Any suggestions on this problem?

Patrick,
I tried - and failed - to replicate your problems, both with regard to French/Portuguese/Swedish characters copied from a Word document and pasted into the HTML Editor, and with your find-replace of "è" to "&grave". Everything seems to work fine here and the characters are properly rendered in preview and browser. See attached screenshot of my simple test case using Editor v.12.6 Build 418 and Firefox 12. The two instances of "&egrave" started out as typed "è"s that were replaced using the find-replace routine.
So now I'm wondering what I may be doing differently from you...
A couple of questions:
- How are you transferring the text from Word to the Editor? (I used copy-paste)
- What charset spec are you using in the Editor? (I used UTF-8)
- Which version of Word are you using? (grasping at straws here...)
Attachments:
User 122279 Photo


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My experience is that copying text from Word into the html Editor creates no errors. It's when a Word document is saved as html that the problems turn up. And I have no idea what kind of doctype or charset Word is using.
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


User 466288 Photo


Registered User
5 posts

My blunder! :rolleyes: Find & replace works perfectly well after all. All that's needed -- and if I had two brain cells to rub together I would have figured this out -- is to save the document after a replacement and 'reboot' the Split-Screen Preview.

The only drawback involves finding and replacing conventional ASCII hyphens with en dashes. This has to be done with great care in order to avoid havoc in the HTML & CSS coding. So global changes with this particular operation is not recommended.

And apologies to Inger for using an unfamiliar slang expression.

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