Computer displaying invalid characters.

Ranadiel

So I don't know if it's just that in some cases the line of text I'm trying to read is using something other than a standard ' or what, but a lot of times my computer will display ? where a ' should be.

An example - when I play Baldur's Gate, some of the mods have included new dialogue, and a lot of this new dialogue comes with this ? error. Or sometimes I'll go to a website and see this, such as a recent add for a roommate I saw on craigslist that was littered with ? where ' should have been.

There are other examples of invalid characters, like sometimes I'll get ’ where a ' should be in the case of a word having a 'll ending on it.

I know this is kind of a cryptic way to describe my problem, but has anyone ever experienced something like this and know how to fix it?

MKR

Developers suck at text encoding.

It's not an error, the program just doesn't handle encodings smartly.

Ranadiel

So when you say, "The program" what do you mean by that?

The Baldur's Gate mods? The browser I use for my internet? (in this case, Mozilla) Or my computer itself?

Doc

Ranadiel wrote: »

So when you say, "The program" what do you mean by that?

The Baldur's Gate mods? The browser I use for my internet? (in this case, Mozilla) Or my computer itself?

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

All of the above. It's probably not a Mozilla issue as much as an issue that either Craigslist's software has, or whatever software he used to post the ad.

MKR

I see it a lot here at PA. A lot of posts got weird characters littered about when alpha pulled PA back from the brink after a DB crash. The repair tool probably didn't account for encoding.