Greek Charset - need urgent advise please

Report · Jul 15, 2009

Hi ALL!

We are working on a project and currently trying to translate to Greek.

I have tried all the usual charset codes like the following:

charset=UTF-8" />
charset=ISO-8859-7" />

Unfortunately the charset are still throwing up ? (question marks) where certain characters should.

We then tried to copy & paste the Greek translated copy from the PowerPoint to our website (coded in php) and hosted on a completely different server and the Greek text work without any issues whats so ever.

Is this a could fusion problem?

Could this be a problem with the host server?

Please if anyone is able to provide some more ideas to try or an answer to help that would be awesome!!

Thank you all for your time and help on this one.

mikehammerton

Report · Jul 16, 2009

first off, stay with unicode (utf-8).

a question mark (?) means the data is garbaged from a fatal encoding error. now

we need to find where it's occurring.

where's the text coming from? a database? can we see an example of the problem

(code/url)?

Report · Jul 16, 2009

Hi Paul

Cheers for the quick reply!

(1) The text is being copied and pasted from a Greek translated PPT doc.

(2) The text is not coming from a DB

(3) Please see below and example of the code:

"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Actelion - Product training & resource station</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="/styles/tracleer_fullscreen.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="/Technical/HTML/js/general.js"></script>

<style type="text/css">
<!--
.style17 {font-size: 10px}
.style18 {font-family: Arial, sans-serif}
-->
</style>
</head>

<body>

<div id="container"></div>
<div id="notes"> <span class="bluebold">Notes </span>
  </p>
  <p>&Eta; &Mu;&epsilon;&lambda;?&tau;&eta; &Alpha;&nu;&tau;&alpha;&gamma;&omega;&nu;&iota;&sigma;&tau;? &Epsilon;&nu;&delta;&omicron;&theta;&eta;&lambda;?&nu;&eta;&sigmaf; &sigma;&epsilon; &Alpha;&sigma;&theta;&epsilon;&nu;&epsilon;?&sigmaf; &mu;&epsilon; ?&pi;&iota;&alpha; &Sigma;&upsilon;&mu;&pi;&tau;&omega;&mu;&alpha;&tau;&iota;&kappa;? &Pi;&Alpha;&Upsilon; (EARLY) &alpha;&xi;&iota;&omicron;&lambda;?&gamma;&eta;&sigma;&epsilon; &tau;&eta; &chi;&rho;?&sigma;&eta; &tau;&omicron;&upsilon; Tracleer &sigma;&epsilon; &alpha;&sigma;&theta;&epsilon;&nu;&epsilon;?&sigmaf; &mu;&epsilon; &Pi;&Alpha;&Upsilon; &lambda;&epsilon;&iota;&tau;&omicron;&upsilon;&rho;&gamma;&iota;&kappa;?&sigmaf; &kappa;&alpha;&tau;&eta;&gamma;&omicron;&rho;?&alpha;&sigmaf; &Iota;&Iota; &kappa;&alpha;&tau;? &tau;&omicron;&nu; &Pi;&alpha;&gamma;&kappa;?&sigma;&mu;&iota;&omicron; &Omicron;&rho;&gamma;&alpha;&nu;&iota;&sigma;&mu;? &Upsilon;&gamma;&epsilon;?&alpha;&sigmaf; (FC II &kappa;&alpha;&tau;? WHO). &Tau;&alpha; &alpha;&pi;&omicron;&tau;&epsilon;&lambda;?&sigma;&mu;&alpha;&tau;&alpha; &tau;&eta;&sigmaf; &mu;&epsilon;&lambda;?&tau;&eta;&sigmaf; &pi;&rho;?&kappa;&epsilon;&iota;&tau;&alpha;&iota; &nu;&alpha; &delta;&eta;&mu;&omicron;&sigma;&iota;&epsilon;&upsilon;&theta;&omicron;?&nu; &sigma;&tau;&omicron; &sigma;?&nu;&omicron;&lambda;? &tau;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf;.<span class="style17"></span></p>

  <p>&nbsp; </p>
</div>

</body>

</html>"

I hope this helps with the advise tips etc.

Thank you once again for your time and help!

mikehammerton

Report · Jul 16, 2009

well the text data was already garbaged when you posted it here. can you open it

up in notepad or something simple & see if the text was garbaged fro the

start? if not, try zipping it up & attaching to the forums.

while i strongly urge you to use this encoding hint:

to the top of all your cf pages.

Report · Jul 16, 2009

Hi Paul

I have saved it in TextEdit, hopefully this will help my situation and yourself.

You mention about "strongly urge you to use this encoding hint:", can I ask what you are referring too?

Thank you for your time and help!!

mikehammerton

Report · Jul 16, 2009

i guess the forums swallowed those two tags, should be:

meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"

and the missing cf tag should be:

cfprocessingdirective pageencoding="utf-8"

Report · Jul 16, 2009

Thanks for that Paul, to confirm I place the:

cfprocessingdirective pageencoding="utf-8"

inside the <meta> tag, right?

Sorry my cfm knowledge is not that great!

Thanks again.

mikehammerton

Report · Jul 16, 2009

no.

'cfprocessingdirective pageencoding="utf-8"'

is a cf tag & should go at the top of your cf pages. see these:

http://www.sustainablegis.com/unicode/showMe.htm

http://www.sustainablegis.com/unicode/greekTest.cfm

Report · Jul 16, 2009

Legend!

Paul, thank you!

I really do appreciate the time, help and advise you have given me for this.

thank you very much, have a good day!

Take care

mikehammerton

Report · Jul 16, 2009

It all seems so complex

Report · Jul 16, 2009

it only seems that way.

Report · Jul 16, 2009

ok, i just looked at the forums posting.

did you use those char entities ("Η" etc.) or is this some kind of artifact

of the forums? if you're doing it, stop. use "normal" text instead.

Report · Jul 16, 2009

does the data is displying from DATABASE?

Greek Charset - need urgent advise please

1 Correct answer