Odd characters

[HowardE]

I just remembered :blush: ... I DID upgrade PHP and MYSQL recently on the DB server (last 3-4 weeks?). I'm looking into possible causes/solutions.

 

[knotical]

Is there a hint in my post number 27 and El Oran's quote of it in #28? Quoting me changed some characters.

My short term solution is to avoid using apostrophe s - except in posts in this thread.

I'd like a longer term solution so the post I cited in number 27 above can be fixed, restoring certain characters so as to restore the proper name to those non-US scuba certifying agencies that use those characters (e.g. FFESSM).

 

[HowardE]

I think if it is in fact the MYSQL (as I now suspect) the -

It's in the actual database as: (copied from DB - not thread on board - and the odd characters are in the DB)

1948 FFESSM - FñÅñÓation FraníÂise d'ñÕudes et de Sports Sous Marins FFESSM - Fédération française d'études et de Sports Sous-Marins
1953 SSAC - Scottish Sub Aqua Club Scottish Sub Aqua Club Home Page
1953 BSAC - British Sub Aqua Club British Sub Aqua Club - SCUBA diving from beginner to extreme - join the fun, join the club
1954 LA County - Los Angeles County Underwater Instructors Association L.A. Scuba
1958 CMAS / WUF - Confederation Mondiale des Activites Subaquatiques / World Underwater Federation CMAS - ConfñÅñÓation Mondiale des ActivitñÔ Subaquatiques - World Underwater Federation - Confederaci? Mundial de Actividades SubacuáÕicas"
1959 YMCA, soon to be Scuba Educators International (SEI)
1960 NAUI - National Association of Underwater Instructors NAUI Worldwide Dive Safety Through Education
1961 NASDS, later absorbed into SSI - National Association of SCUBA Diving Schools
1964 CFT - Comhairle Fo-Thuinn (Ireland) The Website or the Irish Underwa
1965 SAUU - South African Underwater Union, URL unknown
1966 PADI - Professional Association of Diving Instructors PADI. The Way The World Learns to Dive
1960ÃÔ PDIC - Professional Diving Instructors Corporation Scuba Diving School: PDIC International
1969 ACUC - American Canadian Underwater Certifications Home or ACUC International
1970 SSI - Scuba Schools International SSI Scuba Schools International: Welcome to SSI!
1978 IDEA - International Diving Educators Association News and Updates
1981 HAS - Handicapped Scuba Association Handicap Scuba Association
1982 NASE - National Academy of Scuba Educators Welcome to WASI | NASE Worldwide
1984 MDEA - Multinational Diving Educators Association mdeainternationalTITLEMDEA diving certification agency, sport, commercial medic/TITLE
1985 IAND, later IANTD - International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers IANTD IAND rebreathers Scuba Dive Training Agency Nitrox EANx Trimix Oxygen Rebreather Cave Wreck IANDT IAND decompression, scuba diver
1988 ANDI - American Nitrox Divers International Welcome to ANDInternational
1992 IDD - Instructor Dive Development (Netherlands) IDDworld
1993 IAHD - International Association for Handicapped Divers IAHD - We make scuba diving accessible for people with a physical or mental challenge -
1994 AUSI - Associated Underwater Scuba Instructors Ausi - scuba & snorkel diving certification, FREE downloads
1994 TDI - Technical Diving International International Training :: Home ::
1996 WASI - World Association of Scuba Instructors, later absorbed into NASE
1998 GUE - Global Underwater Explorers Global Underwater Explorers | Global Underwater Explorers
1999 SDI - SCUBA Diving International International Training :: Home ::
2008 UTD - Unified Team Diving Unified Team Diving (UTD) International (408) 674-9564

 

[shoredivr]

I've been doing it that way for the entire time I've been on Scubaboard. So the mysteries to me are why it only started recently and why it's intermittent.

Agreed. I'm seeing it too.

 

[redrover]

The fact remains that it was once good. So the change is in Scubaboard, not in my PC.

Ditto

it appears that you have not posted on our forums in several weeks, why not take a few moments to ask a question, help provide a solution or just engage in a conversation with another member in any one of our forums?
Any plans to do something about these characters replacements? ItÃÔ really ÅÂnnoying J so IÃÎ not posting. But, that could be a good thing I guess.
ItÃÔ not intermittent, it is always, and only here on the board. And some of what I've PM'ed turned into complete gibberish, I had no idea what/where/how to edit.

 

[redrover]

Ditto

it appears that you have not posted on our forums in several weeks, why not take a few moments to ask a question, help provide a solution or just engage in a conversation with another member in any one of our forums?
Any plans to do something about these characters replacements? ItÃÔ really ÅÂnnoying J so IÃÎ not posting. But, that could be a good thing I guess.
ItÃÔ not intermittent, it is always, and only here on the board. (after edited to be readable)And some of what I've PM'ed turned into complete gibberish, I had no idea what/where/how to edit.

And how come my post in December is inserted between 2 in November?

 

[Doc Intrepid]

I've had to clean up a few posts of mine as well.

When I insert a bunch of websites I usually compose the post in Word while I'm flipping all over in google.

Then after I've composed the post in Word, I block and copy it into the thread.

The contractions have been hosed up recently...as mentioned above.

Howard, you're the alpha code guru so you're probably correct on its source...
it isn't really a huge problem so long as folks clean up their posts before hitting 'submit' and posting to the thread.

(Even then, given the widespread nincompoopery, incomplete thoughts/sentences, and primal scream-level approach to communications seen recently, its unclear to me how bizarre characters are making SB threads any more difficult to understand than the users are...)

FWIW...

Doc

 

[John_B]

knotical, what you are seeing is that Word (and many other word processing programs) insists on changing apostrophes and quotation marks with what are known as "smart quotes". So instead of straight up and down quotation marks it pairs the opening and closing quotes with stylistic quotes that open like two tiny sixes (66) and close like two tiny nines (99). This may or may not be fine in a Word document where the document is stored in Unicode/UTF-8 format, but it doesn't work very well in programs that expect text to be, well, ... text.

FWIW you can turn off smart quotes in Word but IIRC it would be a global setting (all or nothing).

The characters from people posting from keyboard character sets other that US/UK English is a similar but separate problem, their UTF-8 character set may not map directly to the generic ANSI character set that this board was designed for. If you go to Google and click on the News link at the top, the bottom of that news page has a number of localized links for different languages. To the extent that you don't have the character sets or fonts used on that page, you may see something similar instead of (for example) the fonts used for the Asian or Eastern European languages.

John

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

OKAY! Too much input!!! Stop it stop it stop it. You are broken. Accept it and move on. Have a beer and consider your new typing style as some new art. But for God's sake, quit with the IT talk. It gives a me a headache. More beer, and it'll all look good.
:crash: :blessing:

 

[knotical]

Thanks John.
That's cool.
The apostrophe above should confirm that it worked. In case others are looking to fix it, the following sequence worked in my version of Word:

Tools / Autocorrect Options / Autoformat As You Type / Replace as you type / "Straight quotes with smart quotes"

Now we have a lead toward how to fix the characters in posts that include non-English accent marks, etc.