LISE module and Croatian characters

[jakovbak]

Hello!
Is it possible to display Croatian characters properly? Right now, in LISE instance back end and in website's front end characters like 'ccaron' and 'cacute' are shown as question marks.
Croatian is default language for front end. No change in LISE instance text if back end language is also Croatian instead of English.
I've tried everything I could think of but it wasn't enough. Please let me know if there is a solution!
Thank you in advance and best regards!

[HarmO]

Are you sure your server has the Croatian "locale" installed?
It is like a language support file.

As someone who makes multilingual websites, i know that this can be an issue!

if you manage your own ubuntu server, you can find the all the info here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Locale

Otherwise check with your hosting company.

[jakovbak]

Thank you HarmO, I'll check your link and my hosting provider and get back here with the results.
Best regards!

[jakovbak]

Hello again!
My hosting company claims "Croatian locale" has nothing to do with this issue. They said over 50% of the sites on this server are in Croatian language and none of them have the same problem. They claim this issue must be module-related since there is no "Croatian locale" installed on this server.
Let's dig further...

[velden]

Pretty default install (might even be a little out-dated): http://tinyurl.com/jfpwv9k

(Don't blame me if I used some stupid words, I can't read Croatian )

Works like a charm it seems.
I didn't change Frontend nor backend language to Croation. I doubt my NL hosting provider has Croation locale installed (I guess it's mainly useful for translating e.g. month/day names to Croation etc.)

Could be collation of database (tables, columns), could be the improper use of 'set_names' in config.php, maybe 'locale' in config.php (read the config reference document in /doc).

[jakovbak]

Hello Velden!
My config.php contains only the following:

Code: Select all

<?php
# CMS Made Simple Configuration File
# Documentation: /doc/CMSMS_config_reference.pdf
#
$config['dbms'] = 'xxx';
$config['db_hostname'] = 'xxx';
$config['db_username'] = 'xxx';
$config['db_password'] = 'xxx';
$config['db_name'] = 'xxx';
$config['db_prefix'] = 'xxx';
$config['timezone'] = 'Europe/Zagreb';

?>

And what is really bugging me is the fact that Croatian characters are shown properly outside LISE module. So I did some digging around the sites I made and came up with the following results:

1) In CMSMS 2.1.3 “Black Point” this issue is persistent within some modules on two different servers owned by two different hosting companies (LISE and Gallery module, attachments 1 and 2);

2) In CMS Made Simple™ 1.11.9 “Bartolome” I have old version of the modules (ListIt2 and Gallery) and zero problems (attachment 3);

3) In CMSMS 2.1.3 “Black Point” and LISE module Croatian characters are shown as question marks but outside LISE there is no problem as you can see in attachment Nr. 4.

I don't want to mess with databases unless I'm absolutely certain what am I looking for and what am I suppose to do so, unless otherwise suggested, let's forget about databases for now.
Could it be just a plain old bug?

EDIT: I'll add missing attachment later due to commenting timer restrictions...

[jakovbak]

Missing 4th attachment for previous comment

[jakovbak]

FINALLY GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I ran out of ideas so I have checked MyPHPadmin and noticed that every entry has its collation set to utf8_general_ci except for Gallery module and LISE instance entries - for some reason they were all set to utf8_swedish_ci?!?

First step was to change all of it to correct version of utf-8. Second step takes a lot of manual work - I must change all of misinterpreted characters to proper ones manually because they were entered with wrong encoding and now there are question marks instead of three different characters (no find & replace trick will work, unfortunately).

Why and how Swedish occurred? I have never even think of changing language settings to Swedish... For some reason, the only two non-core modules came with different language settings in DB.

Maybe an interesting challenge for all of you out there who understand that php stuff more than I do?

Anyway, thank you for suggestions and ideas, they were helpful! Have a nice weekend and best regards!!!
jakovbak

[jakovbak]

BTW, it seems like ForumBuilder module has the same issue - utf8_swedish_ci instead of utf8_general_ci. It must be installation related...

[velden]

Pretty default install
...
Could be collation of database (tables, columns)
...

...
I don't want to mess with databases unless I'm absolutely certain what am I looking for and what am I suppose to do so, unless otherwise suggested, let's forget about databases for now.
...

That's not how it works; "let's forget about this possible cause of the problem". Good you were so brave to check it after all

[jakovbak]

Guess I deserved this one, Velden...
Databases are something I absolutely never mess with because I don't know anything about it! This time it was a kind of pure logic approach - if someplace utf8-general should be written but it's not then I should check what can I do about it. And if I don't get it - I'll ask again! Simple as that...
Do you have any idea how this could happened? All I did was installation of modules just like I always do, no unusual actions or messages.
Thank you again and best regards!