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jasong · May 20, 2005, 12:42 PM

For some reason, a number of web pages are showing up with a weird symbol instead of apostrophes and quotes. The symbol is a black diamond with a question mark in it. Changing the font doesn't help, nor does changing the default encoding. Same page (with the same font) looks fine in Firefox.

Any ideas?

Chuckit · May 20, 2005, 03:02 PM

For example?

jasong · May 20, 2005, 03:44 PM

Looks like this:

The above text is an amusing Craig's List Best Of
http://boston.craigslist.org/about/b.../71177097.html

Chuckit · May 20, 2005, 03:54 PM

I can't reproduce it. Is your encoding ISO-Latin? That grab looks like Safari is reading it as UTF-8.

Sir Arthur Dent · May 20, 2005, 04:20 PM

I'm having the same problem. I was coding my website, and thought for a couple weeks that it was a css problem. I haven't found a solution yet.

hoopz · May 20, 2005, 04:38 PM

I see that in Omniweb 5.1.1. too.

ManOfSteal · May 20, 2005, 04:45 PM

What version of Safari is this happening in?

Kristoff · May 20, 2005, 04:45 PM

Same here.

It goes away if I select Western (ISO Latin 1), but if left on default, I get diamonds.

Chuckit · May 20, 2005, 04:48 PM

If you use HTML entities, I doubt you will run into this problem. I'm fairly convinced this is an encoding problem (e.g. sending a file with extended Mac OS Roman or ISO-Latin-1 characters and having it interpreted as UTF-8).

Or you could ensure that your file is properly UTF-8.

CaptainHaddock · May 20, 2005, 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by jasong

For some reason, a number of web pages are showing up with a weird symbol instead of apostrophes and quotes. The symbol is a black diamond with a question mark in it. Changing the font doesn't help, nor does changing the default encoding. Same page (with the same font) looks fine in Firefox.

Like posters here have suggested, that's almost always the result of a web page declares the wrong encoding - like saying it's UTF-8 when it's actually ISO-Latin-1. And since 50% of web pages don't declare any encoding, Safari often has to guess or fall back on UTF-8 (which is what most pages should be using).

Oddly enough, though, the page you pointed out looks fine to me in Safari 2.0.

Chuckit · May 20, 2005, 05:18 PM

Haddock, are you saying your default encoding is UTF-8 but the page still displays correctly?

Apfhex · May 20, 2005, 10:09 PM

I'm seeing those question marks all over the place right here on the forums! It's only been after upgrading to Tiger/Safari 2.0 as far as I can tell. They seem to be mostly in place of " and ' marks, as well as ellipses and other punctuation (but only sometimes). Goes away when it tell the encoding to be Western ISO Latin 1 instead of Default.

TETENAL · May 20, 2005, 10:16 PM

Originally Posted by Apfhex

I'm seeing those question marks all over the place right here on the forums! It's only been after upgrading to Tiger/Safari 2.0 as far as I can tell.

No, it's been since this forum has been switched to UTF-8 (see the feedback forum). The old forum entries are still ISO-Latin1 so this forums sends them in another encoding than it declares it does.

CaptainHaddock · May 20, 2005, 11:18 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Haddock, are you saying your default encoding is UTF-8 but the page still displays correctly?

Yeah. Weird, huh?

Chuckit · May 20, 2005, 11:47 PM

That is weird. I figured it worked for me because my default encoding is ISO-Latin-1. I guess Safari is more magical than previously suspected.

jasong · May 21, 2005, 09:39 AM

It was (is) an encoding problem. Something i just learned, even though Safari makes your font selection changes as soon as you make them, the encoding doesn't change until you quit and restart Safari. My encoding was set as Western Mac OS Roman. I tried changing it to ISO Latin 1 and UTF-8 with no changes (because I didn't restart Safari) and assumed that wasn't it and posted here.

So for the record, what should the default encoding for an American english speaker in the northeastern United States be?

TETENAL · May 21, 2005, 10:00 AM

Originally Posted by jasong

So for the record, what should the default encoding for an American english speaker in the northeastern United States be?

Well, "Default".

tooki · May 21, 2005, 10:46 AM

Originally Posted by jasong

It was (is) an encoding problem. Something i just learned, even though Safari makes your font selection changes as soon as you make them, the encoding doesn't change until you quit and restart Safari. My encoding was set as Western Mac OS Roman. I tried changing it to ISO Latin 1 and UTF-8 with no changes (because I didn't restart Safari) and assumed that wasn't it and posted here.

So for the record, what should the default encoding for an American english speaker in the northeastern United States be?

Not true, the default encoding preference is set immediately. (I just tried.) Remember that switching the default encoding preference will NOT reload pages that have already been loaded. But if you've switched a page's encoding, and switch it back to Default, you'll see the difference. The same if you load it in a new window.

Manually switching an encoding (View->Text Encoding) of a page ALWAYS takes effect immediately.

ISO Latin 1 is probably the best default for you. Most sites that use Unicode are smart enough to correctly declare their text encoding (as we do here on the forums). Most sites that don't declare it are using ISO Latin 1.

tooki

tooki · May 21, 2005, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Well, "Default".

Well that's a stupid answer, since the question was what to set the default to. It's in Safari's preferences. By default it's ISO Latin 1, which is the best for most people in the Americas, Western Europe and Down Under.

tooki

TETENAL · May 21, 2005, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by tooki

Well that's a stupid answer, since the question was what to set the default to.

It's not "a stupid answer". The default setting for the text encoding is called "Default". And that's the setting an American english speaker in the northeastern United States should chose.

Kristoff · May 21, 2005, 12:30 PM

TETENAL, what are you talking about?

The Default option in the View menu might say "Default" but it is whatever is selected in the Preferences, Appearance, Default Encoding. There is nothing called "Default" there.

jasong · May 21, 2005, 02:19 PM

Aha, changing the default encoding via the view menu does take immediate effect (even without reloading the page). However changing it in the preferences window does not (at least not on my machine).

And yes, via the View menu there is a Default option, via Safari preferences (where I was looking), there is not.

Chuckit · May 21, 2005, 02:25 PM

The View menu doesn't change the default encoding; it changes the current encoding.

CaptainHaddock · May 21, 2005, 07:17 PM

I think UTF-8 is best no matter where you live. If everyone used it, there would be no encoding conflicts. And not everyone can use ISO-Latin-1 because it lacks so many characters (even in the Latin alphabet).

Chuckit · May 21, 2005, 07:25 PM

UTF-8 is the best encoding to use if you're making a Web page, certainly. But as a browser default, ISO-Latin-1 makes more sense for an English-speaker because that's what most pages use. Anybody standards-compliant enough to use Unicode will most likely be standards-compliant enough to say so in their header.

Kristoff · May 21, 2005, 11:30 PM