Mystery ? marks in Forum Posts

[rickcrites]

Any time I post to the Forums module installed within Sugar, I get a mystery question mark in the copy where ever there are two spaces in a row. For example, if I put two spaces between sentences (as is my habit), I see a question mark there when I view the post.

This mark does not show up when editing, but it does show in every post when viewed by me or my users.

Any clue what causes this, or what to do to solve it? I have filed a bug report, but gotten no feedback yet from Sugar.

Can anyone else reproduce this?

Thanks,

[rickcrites]

After further study, I have some observations about this:

This is a character set issue. If I view a Forum page in Sugar, that has these weird question marks showing, and I set my browser to use the ISO-8859-1 character set, the question marks disappear. But, if I refresh the page, or navigate to another thread, the browser defaults back to UTF-8 and the weird marks reappear.

This leads me to believe that the FCKEditor that is producing the text in the posts is doing so in ISO-8859-1. But, my browser insists on reading the pages in UTF-8.

I have set the default settings in config.php to UTF-8 everywhere that I can find. Is there some other way to get FCKEditor to create the messages in the same UTF-8 format they will be read in?

Or, is there a setting I can change on my server (perhaps in Apache) to get the browser to look at the site in ISO-8859-1?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[ruchida]

Hi

I'm not familiar with the architecture of FCKeditor, which the Forum or Thread module uses in the text input erea, but the Thread module seems to save the text as is returned from a browser. Your issue makes me think that the text you input in your browser is nerver converted to UTF-8 and saved during this process.

How is your mbstring section set in php.ini?

This is the recommended settings for your reference.

By setting the "mbstring.encoding_translation" to On, Apache automatically converts a charset encoding from anything to what is defined by "mbstring.internal_encoding", (it's UTF-8 in this case.)

This is worth trying.

[csc111vs]

HI
i tried to find the forums project in sugar forge projects. but i could n't find it.
as i worked with FCKEditor samples they are fine.can u find the similar errors in any other
modules like Email.

Sarath.

[malcolmh]

HI,

We have a slightly different problem. In the detail view German special characters are not displayed correctly. When re-editing the text the characters are displayed correctly.

If we quote a text it is then shown incorrectly in the Edit window.

[rickcrites]

Hi

I'm not familiar with the architecture of FCKeditor, which the Forum or Thread module uses in the text input erea, but the Thread module seems to save the text as is returned from a browser. Your issue makes me think that the text you input in your browser is nerver converted to UTF-8 and saved during this process.

How is your mbstring section set in php.ini?

This is the recommended settings for your reference.

By setting the "mbstring.encoding_translation" to On, Apache automatically converts a charset encoding from anything to what is defined by "mbstring.internal_encoding", (it's UTF-8 in this case.)

This is worth trying.

Thanks for the Wiki reference.

I had already found this and changed my php.ini file to turn on mbstring translation, etc. I have set everything as directed in the Wiki, restarted httpd and tested for the problem again. The same problem still exists. (I was a little puzzled about setting the language reference to "Japanese" instead of "English", but I have followed the instructions to the letter.)

I double checked the WebHost Manager and determined that the mbstings module is built into PHP in Apache. As far as I can tell, it is being called from the php.ini at restart. I tried the query given in the Wiki to see if the mbstring section is displayed but got the following error from bash:
root@vps223 [~]# ?php phpinfo(); ?
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
root@vps223 [~]# <?php phpinfo(); ?>
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

You may very well be right that this is an mbstrings issue. But, I don't know what else to try to make it right.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks a lot for your help.

Best,

[rickcrites]

HI
i tried to find the forums project in sugar forge projects. but i could n't find it.
as i worked with FCKEditor samples they are fine.can u find the similar errors in any other
modules like Email.

Sarath.

The Forums module is located here.

I don't get this problem with any other modules. When I send a test email, I can see in the raw data the &nbsp; character sequence that is causing the problem, but my email program manages to translate correctly and present the message properly. It is only the module program that I am having trouble with (as far as I know at this time).

Thanks for your help.

Best,

[rickcrites]

HI,

We have a slightly different problem. In the detail view German special characters are not displayed correctly. When re-editing the text the characters are displayed correctly.

If we quote a text it is then shown incorrectly in the Edit window.

Hi Malcolm,

It sounds to me as though your problem and mine could be closely related or the same. When editing, the characters appear right. When viewed, they do not. Sounds suspiciously similar.

If we all put our minds to it, we should be able to figure this out. I'm sure we are not the only ones who have had or will have this problem. It would be nice to be able to publish a real solution to this vexing little issue.

I hope this thread will draw the attention of the SugarCRM crew so that we can have the benefit of their input.

Best,

[rickcrites]

Here is more data on this:

I installed Ken Brill's FCKEditor Update module today. It adds the FCK HTML Editor to all of the description fields in various modules. I find that I am now getting the same mystery encoding problem any time I do a note or description using the FCK Editor in any of these other modules. As usual, the encoding looks right when editing but wrong when viewing the text.

Now it is even more important that I get this fixed, as it can now effect formatted text in any module.

I hope someone has some further ideas on this.

Thanks,

[csc111vs]

The Forums module is located here.

I don't get this problem with any other modules. When I send a test email, I can see in the raw data the &nbsp; character sequence that is causing the problem, but my email program manages to translate correctly and present the message properly. It is only the module program that I am having trouble with (as far as I know at this time).

Thanks for your help.

Best,

Hi rickcrites,
i have installed latest version for forum module.
Sugar Forums 4.5.0 Latest v4.5.0 - 2006-09-23 21:37,
Now it is accepting special characters and other Unicode Charecters .
i think Sugar Team have rectified the previous bug.

regards,
Sarath.