[RESOLVED] My WinXP Browser can not display Greek Characters!

dvarsam

Hello!
I just subscribed to this Forum!
This is my first post.

I have the following problem:
I have installed PHP, Apache & MySQL through XAMPP.
Whenever I type Greek Characters to buttons or links, the characters don't show properly in my Browser - the format is unreadable!!!

I have provided a picture here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=368527
(scroll down to see the pic - under user "dvarsam")

Please help, cause I can't work in Window's Xampp.

Thanks.

P.S.> Wow, this site is the same as ubuntuforums - I love that!!! 🙂

scrupul0us

1) do u have the Greek language pack installed on windows?

2) does your browser support the Greek language?

MarkR

Looks like you have an inconsistency in encodings. Ensure that all of your encodings used are consistent and correct, based on the encoding you think you should be using.

Personally I'd recommend using utf8, but that's just my preference.

Mark

dvarsam

Hello & Thanks for your reply!

scrupul0us wrote:
1) do u have the Greek language pack installed on windows?

How can I check that?
All I can say, is that when I installed my Windows XP SP2 from CD, during the install, I added the Greek Keyboard, Added the Greek Currency (i.e. Euro), and basically that was all...

scrupul0us wrote:
2) Does your browser support the Greek language?

You mean, if I can watch Greek characters displayed on my IE Browser?
Well, if I visit the following Greek Site on the Web, it loads up fine!
Site: www.in.gr

Thanks.

dvarsam

MarkR wrote:
Looks like you have an inconsistency in encodings. Ensure that all of your encodings used are consistent and correct, based on the encoding you think you should be using.

Personally I'd recommend using utf8, but that's just my preference.

How can I check whether I have inconsistency in encodings?
Where do I go?
Control Panel?
I have never done this before...

I am not sure, but I think during the installation of WinXP SP2, I have seen somewhere UTF8, but I can't remember...
I did not tamper with that setting during the install though... :-k

Thanks.

P.S.> This Forum Site, does NOT share/use the same smilies with the ubuntuforums.org, as I can see...

MarkR

The problem is probably your application, not your installation of Windows.

As far as I'm aware, Windows (even English) installs with Greek characters in its fonts by default.

You need to ensure that all files in your application are in a consistent encoding, and that that is the same encoding as the browser thinks they're in, and that all data operations also respect that particular encoding for storage, retrieval and integration with third party systems.

This will involve your editor, database, email and other things being encoding-aware - consult specific documentation for more information.

Mark

dvarsam

MarkR wrote:
The problem is probably your application, not your installation of Windows.

As far as I'm aware, Windows (even English) installs with Greek characters in its fonts by default.

You need to ensure that all files in your application are in a consistent encoding, and that that is the same encoding as the browser thinks they're in, and that all data operations also respect that particular encoding for storage, retrieval and integration with third party systems.

This will involve your editor, database, email and other things being encoding-aware - consult specific documentation for more information.

Thanks for your reply!
I decided to perform the following:

Launch Window's Internet Explorer
From the Menu, select "View\Encoding\More\Unicode (UTF8)"
(instead of the default "Greek (Windows)" view setting...

That fixed the problem!!!
Thanks for your suggestions.
They helped me figure how to work this out...

aspekt9

Remember to mark your thread resolved if you're allset 🙂

MarkR

This is not a correct fix.

Your application should be built in such a way that the browser automatically selects the correct encoding; it should use the same encoding throughout, consistently, and be totally aware of the encodings it's using in talking to a database and/or other systems.

Changing the encoding manually in the browser should NEVER be necessary in a correctly built application.

Mark

leatherback

Let me expand on MarkR's solution:

YOU have a working site on your browser. nw somebody else loads it.. He gets illedgible text.

In the header of the output page, you need to specify the encoding, which will tell the browser how to interpret the whole series of bits, and what characters he is actually supposed to show. I suggest you do a bit of googling & reading on the topic, as this is not a trivial issue, and needs to be thought through carefully.

Ensure that:
-all your scripts are created using the same encoding as
-- Your database and as
-- The HTML encoding definition