Funky forum punctuation

[WyethDigital]

Okay, I've been noticing this in a lot of posts. For some reason, especially on text that is pasted, apostrophes and other normal punctuation marks in forum posts are converted to question marks. I don't know if this is my browser, the new forum software, or some kind of incompatibility of my system with the default font you use around here.

The problem generally takes this form: "It's" becomes "It?s" or "Isn't" becomes "Isn?t"

I suspect it has more to do with the forum than with me, mainly because I can go into the edit box for a post I've made and manually fix the punctuation. If I copy text with this quirk, it also carries over to wherever else I paste it.

Any idea what's up and why?

Eric

[Yotto]

The problem is the site you're copying from. Ever notice how, in word, when you type an apostrophe it changes it to a smaller version of the forward slash? That's an extended ascii character. I don't know which one, but it confuses PCA (or maybe it confuses your browser when shown from PCA, I'm not sure, but I think it's the other way). I don't know if PCA can fix it, other than manually editing.

[BrynM]

Nope. He's right. We've got a garbled character issue. We're catching them as we go for the most part. It's stuff from upgrading the forums and the Database itself. If you notice the new posts in the forums (such as the one WyethDigital just made) aren't doing it, but the older ones are - and there are many older posts. We've also encountered a few where our podcast feed data is concerned because of changes to our validation engine.

It's carrying over when you copy because those are the characters being served. Unfortuantely, at this very moment we're putting some fixes in place for functionality. The presentation will have to come after that, but it is coming soon. There are a few bug tracking tickets in, but if you notice a bunch in a row please post them here. It'll be good for testing to be sure we've got them taken care of.

[WyethDigital]

The problem is the site you're copying from. Ever notice how, in word, when you type an apostrophe it changes it to a smaller version of the forward slash? That's an extended ascii character. I don't know which one, but it confuses PCA (or maybe it confuses your browser when shown from PCA, I'm not sure, but I think it's the other way). I don't know if PCA can fix it, other than manually editing.

No, I wasn't getting a forward slash. Sorry. I was getting an apostrophe, but it did look different. I found that if I deleted it and retyped it, then it would work. It's also not only my posts. Look at the forum News From PodcastingNews.com (http://www.podcastalley.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=250) and The Ferf's posts. Garbled Apostrophes everywhere.

Just thought they'd like to know about it. So far they've been getting these little bugs fixed, and you don't get much littler than an apostrophe ;)

Eric

[Yotto]

I stand corrected. I've seen the apostrophe-turned-question-mark too many times to think it was anything else.

Nothing to see here. Move along, people. :D