No special characters in header?

[Zirbelholz]

I would like to transfer my four-year-old weblog, which is in MT, to another provider, URL and software. I seem to have succeeded in installing Serendipity at www.transblawg.eu (old URL is www.margaret-marks.com/Transblawg). I have got Bulletproof installed but may well change it. The colour or lack of it is not intended to stay as it is.

Beginner's query: Is it correct that I can't use umlauts in the header? (Blog is in English and German).

And while I'm at it: can I change the appearance of plug-ins? e.g. the calendar, if it is a plug-in, has the date written in a way I'd prefer to change.

Serendipity looks very good to use and update, but I can see there are quite a few things I want to change in the appearance, so I am going to have to look at the html or whatever. I am very ignorant about this and even if I do something in html or alter code, I always forget how to do it. So I can put the header and subheader in a graphic, but then they won't be searchable as text. So maybe I should have a graphic without text and a text header below. Questions relating to this would be premature as I haven't RTFM yet.

TIA
Margaret

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Beginner's query: Is it correct that I can't use umlauts in the header? (Blog is in English and German).

You can use umlauts in the header! However depending on the charset you configured for the s9y blog you might need to re-enter the blog-header after installation.

And while I'm at it: can I change the appearance of plug-ins? e.g. the calendar, if it is a plug-in, has the date written in a way I'd prefer to change.

You can change the appearance either through CSS and for some plugins also with Template files. The calendar plugin for example uses the "plugin_calendar.tpl" template file for its output, there you can also change the used date format (using PHPs strftime() parameters).

You can change all other parts of your template by editing the Smarty .tpl / template files, have a look at www.s9y.org for more technical information on that.

HTH,
Garvin

[Zirbelholz]

Thanks very much, Garvin. That sounds promising.

Of course I didn't configure any character set consciously myself. The installation was very easy. I see that UTF-8 was set.

I have now tried toggling DB charset recognition to no effect, and then changing UTF-8 to 'Native'. The latter changed the ü into an i with diaresis, an inverted question mark and a symbol for half. I wonder what is meant by 'Native'. I have a feeling I should change the blog language to German - maybe 'Native' would have a different effect then? I tried to change the language to German plus UTF-8, and although I saved the changes, the language remained English, although the change back to UTF-8 worked.

How do I change the language of the blog - reinstall? And would that help in the header?

As I said before, this is a problem I can get around. But I must admit I would like to know how to make it work.

Waffle follows, no further questions:
(I rejoined domainfactory and they have a version of s9y ready for installation. I used that first. It wouldn't even accept my subheader and stated 'illegal characters'. When I removed the umlauts, I kept getting an error message. I kept looking to make sure I had 'ue' everywhere except 'ü', but probably the installation setup has a long memory. Eventually I had to remove the subheader completely in order to proceed with the installation.

After that I installed the new version for myself via ftp and the umlauts didn't work there either. I thought that might be endemic to the program, after the domainfactory experience. Had it not been for that, I would of course have assumed it was something I could alter. )

Regards
Margaret

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Yes, when you change charsets, this will "mangle" with the characters that are currently contained in your page.

Changing the charset does not affect any stored characters, so once you switch, you always need to edit the existing entries or config items again and insert a new "ü" inside the field and save it.

So simply use "UTF-8", that is the best thing in your case. Once you saved it, enter the configuration, enter your "ü" into the head, and then it should work.

(I rejoined domainfactory and they have a version of s9y ready for installation. I used that first. It wouldn't even accept my subheader and stated 'illegal characters'. When I removed the umlauts, I kept getting an error message. I kept looking to make sure I had 'ue' everywhere except 'ü', but probably the installation setup has a long memory. Eventually I had to remove the subheader completely in order to proceed with the installation.

Hm, that sounds weird. Where did that error come from exactly? I don't think that s9y has a "illegal characters" warning, so it might have come from your webserver or database or browser?

HTH,
Garvin

[Zirbelholz]

Yes, but I was using UTF-8 all along, so using UTF-8 would not solve the problem. And I can't change to German (but German characters are perfectly OK in the body of the blog, just not in the heading).

As for the warning, domainfactory.de has an adaptation of Serendipity for very easy installation. They told me they altered 'minor details' in the software packages, but nothing fundamental, so they will have added that warning themselves in the screen where you enter your details. But the fact that they prevented me using umlauts - and they are a German forum - was why I asked here.

Margaret

[Zirbelholz]

(Second reply)

So, I changed to Native and reentered a shorter form of the subheader. Thereupon the header and all the äöüß in my second entry went haywire. I then changed back to UTF-8 and reentered that heading, and I was back to square one - everything OK in the blog entry, but the header mangled.

However, you may have better things to do than understand this. Thanks for the suggestions.

Margaret

[Zirbelholz]

(Third reply)

Oh no! It's my browser. I always have that trouble with Firefox, but not on my weblog page at its current address.

(Hitting self on head with newspaper) Sorry about that. Everything is OK.

Regards

Margaret

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

That's extremely weird. It's expected that if you change the charset from UTF-8 to native that all blog entries go wild, because then a different saved character gets emitted.

BUT if you change to UTF-8 and save the blogdescription as "Weblog from Fürth" it really should display fine. Can you please enter (while having UTF-8 enabled) the string "Weblog from Fürth (äöüß)". Just to see if when you save a change, that is properly reflected.

Regards,
Garvin

[Zirbelholz]

Hi Garvin,

In case our messages did not overlap, I've done that and it does look OK. The ß has become SS, but that is correct in uppercase (which is a problem my old Movable Type had - I have an uppercase header and it looks dreadful to a German to see ß in uppercase, although uppercase ß does exist, but not many people know that).

Margaret