Skip to main content
Topic: Text characters change after import? (Read 1600 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Text characters change after import?

Just installed Elkarte using  Open Importer from an SMF 2.0.17 board.
The import went well and the board is up and running with the latest Elkarte 1.1.6 version.  The only problem that I have found is a that some of the text characters have changed. See photo which shows the problem, is there a setting that I can change to correct this?

Re: Text characters change after import?

Reply #1

Hi @cjazz this is a database encoding/collation issue.

Most likely something in the chain is not UTF8.
Check through phpmyadmin or the way you have to access the database from your control panel and see if any one between database, tables, columns in the elkarte_attachments table are in another Eencoding than UTB8 (likely latin-something) and report it here.
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Text characters change after import?

Reply #2

Everything seems to be in order and all elkarte db files are UTB8. 
It's not a major problem there are only a few text character errors, and these are editable.

Re: Text characters change after import?

Reply #3

After discovering many other broken text characters on the board I carried out a further check through phpMyAdmin
The very bottom database file (collation) is stating 91 files are latin1_swedish_ci 98.9 MiB, all of the other files have a collation of utf8_general_ci.  Could this be the problem?

Edit:
Correct image now added
Last Edit: February 11, 2020, 05:04:18 pm by cjazz

 

Re: Text characters change after import?

Reply #4

Quite likely. Your other post, showing the degraded/garbage characters in posts, is typical of a problem with UTF-8.
Was the 2.0.17 site in UTF8? Or was it in the SMF default character set (Windows-1252)?

By the way: your screenshot is showing database table, not files. Not quite the same thing. :)  
Master of Expletives: Now with improved family f@&king friendliness! :D

Sources code: making easy front end changes difficult since 1873. :P

Re: Text characters change after import?

Reply #5

Quote from: Antechinus – Was the 2.0.17 site in UTF8? Or was it in the SMF default character set (Windows-1252)?
Not sure? because the smf board had no problems with the text display.
There is an option on the smf board to convert to UTF8 when I carry this conversion out the SMF board develops the same fault.

Re: Text characters change after import?

Reply #6

Yep, that can happen. Elk uses UTF8 by default, which makes a lot of sense, but converting SMF 1.1.x or 2.0.x from ISO to UTF8 can cause glitches like this.

Honestly, fixing this is above my pay grade. You'll need someone who is more up to speed with database trickery. I'm sure there is a fix, because it's a reasonably common problem, but offhand I don't know what that fix is.
Master of Expletives: Now with improved family f@&king friendliness! :D

Sources code: making easy front end changes difficult since 1873. :P

Re: Text characters change after import?

Reply #7

hmm... character encoding issue are the worse for me.
The easiest thing you could try is to just change the collation. Though I'm not entirely sure this would work (you may take a backup in order to stay on the safe side and in case restore everything.
What is a bit strange is that you have imported SMF content, so the tables should already be in UTF8, though they are not?
 emanuele is confused... @Spuds any magic from you?
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.