Broken special characters

[Katya]

Due to a pre-Board 5.0 database change, there are a lot of broken accented characters in the archives. If I submit the words with the correct characters as a comment, would an editor be willing to make the changes in the question to fix the characters (and then trash the comment)? (I guess that's assuming that's even possible for the editors to do; it was in Board 4.0.)

[Dragon Lady]

This has nothing to do with the Board, but the thread name reminded me, so I'm gonna say it anyway. I was reading the newest Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites book and about halfway through the ō in Morōn turned into a ☐. Except it was the tall skinny box. A rectangle, if you will. (But I can't find that in my special characters table.) And it made me laugh because apparently halfway through printing, the printer stopped recognizing diacritics. And they let it go to print anyway. (Probably didn't notice it.) Maybe it's just because I hate diacritics due to a very unfortunate problem at my last two jobs… but the fact that half a book didn't recognize it made me giggle.

[Laser Jock]

Hey, Katya, sorry no one got back to you here. I figured I'd let the editors respond if they wanted, but I'll step in since they haven't yet. Knowing the correct characters would be very helpful (like that thread in the writer forum), but once we know which correct character corresponds to which garbled one, it would be much easier to fix them automatically, all at once, using a script. I can't say how the editors feel about the comment idea, but it would probably be less work to either continue that thread in the forum (is that one you can see as a retired writer?), or via email to them, CPM, Yellow, or myself. I don't know when the questions will get fixed, but I know there's a better way than tackling them all manually.

[ahem.]

I was reading the newest Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites book

Still can't believe those are going on. I remember reading that series in seventh grade. That was over ten years ago. And it's been what, six years since the last installment?

it would probably be less work to either continue that thread in the forum (is that one you can see as a retired writer?)

The only thread we can see is the "Alumni Updates."

[Katya]

Hey, Katya, sorry no one got back to you here. I figured I'd let the editors respond if they wanted, but I'll step in since they haven't yet. Knowing the correct characters would be very helpful (like that thread in the writer forum), but once we know which correct character corresponds to which garbled one, it would be much easier to fix them automatically, all at once, using a script. I can't say how the editors feel about the comment idea, but it would probably be less work to either continue that thread in the forum (is that one you can see as a retired writer?), or via email to them, CPM, Yellow, or myself. I don't know when the questions will get fixed, but I know there's a better way than tackling them all manually.

OK. I tried to get CPM to fix them automatically, at one point, but I think he was too busy. Also, I don't necessarily know what all of them are supposed to be (especially with the Russian ones, where it's completely garbled), but I can probably figure out a few at a time, substitution cipher-style. I hope that's good enough.

[Laser Jock]

The only thread we can see is the "Alumni Updates."

Thanks! I guess e-mail is the best way, then.

OK. I tried to get CPM to fix them automatically, at one point, but I think he was too busy. Also, I don't necessarily know what all of them are supposed to be (especially with the Russian ones, where it's completely garbled), but I can probably figure out a few at a time, substitution cipher-style. I hope that's good enough.

Okay. Well, I'm quite willing to adopt this, assuming that CPM and Yellow think it should happen. So feel free to e-mail me with any corrections you have. (And yes, just knowing a few characters is helpful: what we'll most likely do, again assuming this happens, is just do a search-and-replace for the garbled characters. It's unlikely that there are very many intended instances of them in answers.)

[Katya]

OK, I'm going to use this thread as a place to keep notes for characters that should be replaced until I have enough data to warrant an email:

Known Characters

Ç -> ç

ex. FranÇois -> François in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/41117/

è -> è

ex. crème brûlée -> crème brûlée in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/40233/ (I don't understand why the é was fine when the è got garbled, though)

û -> û

ex. crème brûlée -> crème brûlée in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/40233/

ö -> ö

ex. Gödel -> Gödel in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/36730/ and Schrödinger's -> Schrödinger's in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/36837/

Unknown Characters

Unknown Hebrew characters in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/41108/

– -> possibly should be an em dash? (see http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/40412/ , for an example)

[Dragon Lady]

Unknown Hebrew characters in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/41108/

הַלְּלוּיָהּ Hallelujah. (Though, this forum, apparently, doesn't like to put Hebrew vowels under their letters…)

[OptimusPrime]

Since I perpetrated some of the crimes, the least I can do is decode a few of the ones I know:

ÄŽ -> Ď or ď (not sure which)
á -> á
Å™ -> ř
à -> í (note there is a hidden character after this one, acts like a space)

ex. Ďábelské koÅ™enà in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/32486/ (should read ďábelské koření)

Å¡ -> š

ex. nejmenÅ¡Ã in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/38297/ (should read nejmenší)

ž -> ž
č -> č (note that there's some kind of hidden character after this one, doesn't take room like a space, but it takes two arrow keys to get past it)

ex. Cože and omáčka in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/37342/

É -> É

ex. Éramos in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/33792/

ø -> ø

ex. søn in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/33792/

Ä› -> ě

ex. češtině in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/44440/
This URL has several others that need decoding --^

Others that need more decoding:
http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/43733/
http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/42247/ (one character)

[OptimusPrime]

A note concerning em dashes, the long dash preceding Laser Jock's sign out is unchanged.

See http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/43668/ for one similar to your em dash example ( … ). It's obviously some kind of punctuation.

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/37796/ has a bunch of – which appear to be used like em/en/regular dashes
This question also contains the curious effect of putting an acute accent mark over any letter preceding an apostrophe:

Í’d
didń’t
Aesoṕ’s-type
that́’s

(the last two show differently in this forum than on the board)

You can also see this in http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/46052/ where you can find ‘ which looks like it should be a smart ` (left single quote)

One more, then I'm done for a while:

160 °F in [url]http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/44841/[url] is interesting, since the degree sign is already there, sort of.

[Dragon Lady]

A note concerning em dashes, the long dash preceding Laser Jock's sign out is unchanged.

I'm pretty sure that's because he did special things to all of his em dashes. I recall him talking about it a few times.

[Laser Jock]

A note concerning em dashes, the long dash preceding Laser Jock's sign out is unchanged.

I'm pretty sure that's because he did special things to all of his em dashes. I recall him talking about it a few times.

Yeah, until Board 5.0 I used HTML character entity references to create my em dashes (e.g., — ); they get interpreted as an em dash by browsers, but don't risk getting all screwed up by changing character encodings. But I'm now confident that we know what we're doing (and we're storing text as unicode, unlike a couple years ago), so I'm just doing real em dashes.

[Dragon Lady]

I do believe … is supposed to be an em dash as I'm sure that's what I used here: http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/31129/

[Katya]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/36041/

I'm guessing that Катя is Катя, but I'm not sure how the individual letters correspond to the garbled text.

Also,

ä -> ä

[Katya]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/36540/

ø -> ø

[Dead Cat]

Finding this question was particularly ironic.

https://theboard.byu.edu/questions/2201/

"§åû®Âµ$" should be "§åû®μ$"...and I'm not really sure about the other ones, but...