Info Font, Symbol, Character Question Marks and Diamond error icons.

I have been posting excerpts from articles in Drugs in the Media as I always do and all quotation marks, hyphens, and apostrophes are being turned into "?". I have never had this problem before.

For example:

Asked about marijuana legalization over the weekend at a legislative coffee event, a Kansas lawmaker, Republican state Rep. Steve Alford, gave a shocking response: ?What you really need to do is go back in the ?30s and when they outlawed all types of drugs in Kansas [and] across the United States. What was the reason why they did that? One of the reasons why ? I hate to say it ? it?s the African Americans, they were basically users and they basically responded the worst off those drugs just because their character makeup, their genetics, and that.?
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Test post:

Asked about marijuana legalization over the weekend at a legislative coffee event, a Kansas lawmaker, Republican state Rep. Steve Alford, gave a shocking response: “What you really need to do is go back in the ’30s and when they outlawed all types of drugs in Kansas [and] across the United States. What was the reason why they did that? One of the reasons why — I hate to say it — it’s the African Americans, they were basically users and they basically responded the worst off those drugs just because their character makeup, their genetics, and that.”
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Weird, the effect isn't consistent.
 
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So we had this weird bug screwing all the posts... then it was fixed. Now it's back again but we can use weird symbols if we want (?), just not apostrophe's? Can't we just find out what the old method which worked was? Or install like a working font/character set.

Sorry I know this suggestion is too obvious to just be the silver bullet that saves the day, but I don't get why it isn't and wasn't all along. Anyone? Just intrigued.

Testing android 7/firefox '
 
Tranced said:
So we had this weird bug screwing all the posts... then it was fixed. Now it's back again but we can use weird symbols if we want (?), just not apostrophe's? Can't we just find out what the old method which worked was? Or install like a working font/character set.

Sorry I know this suggestion is too obvious to just be the silver bullet that saves the day, but I don't get why it isn't and wasn't all along. Anyone? Just intrigued.

Testing android 7/firefox '
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It appears that more people are affected with this fix, as more people use iOS to post apostrophes and quotes than those who use Unicode symbols and emojis. There is a solution that'll fix both issues, but I can't see the current config so I can't attempt to fix it myself.
 
alasdairm said:
i have been doing some more reading and this seems to be a function of the introduction of 'smart punctuation' in ios 11.

some reading:

Tips: Turn off iOS 11 Smart Punctuation to avoid data entry problems
apostrophe encoding breaks login

tl;dr: switch it off - settings -> general - > keyboard -> smart punctuation
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I don't use any Apple software but I am still getting this issue as of today. I suppose it might be because the websites posting the articles I have been quoting are using iOS, and therefore have been posting non-standard punctuation. It sure is a pain in the ass.
 
S.J.P. said:
I don't use any Apple software but I am still getting this issue as of today. I suppose it might be because the websites posting the articles I have been quoting are using iOS, and therefore have been posting non-standard punctuation. It sure is a pain in the ass.
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Yip, that's what happens when you quote an article via copy and paste at the moment.

To fix it, you can open up notepad (or similar) and paste the article in, then copy and paste it back out. This will automatically convert the characters to the standard formatting which is recognised by this version of vbulletin.
 
Tranced said:
Yip, that's what happens when you quote an article via copy and paste at the moment.

To fix it, you can open up notepad (or similar) and paste the article in, then copy and paste it back out. This will automatically convert the characters to the standard formatting which is recognised by this version of vbulletin.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll try that out.

EDIT: This doesn't help... the question marks still appear.
 
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S.J.P. said:
I have been posting excerpts from articles in Drugs in the Media as I always do and all quotation marks, hyphens, and apostrophes are being turned into "?". I have never had this problem before.

For example:
Click to expand...

Just adding that I have had the same problem, and it's been oddly inconsistent (e.g., no changes/changes into question marks from same source, although if I post multiple quotes from same article I get consistent error).
 
This still doesn?t work correctly. I think it should work on an iphone with chrome. It?s one of the most used configurations...

Sorry to keep nagging about it...

Vazkor
 
Ah so I'm not the only person who worked out how to fix this on iPhone.

I was just thinking about this issue and thought to check this subforum to see if it had been mentioned.

Interesting to know it's a consequence of fixing emoji support. But certainly not surprising since both involve unusual unicorn symbols.

So, the problem is that the forum isn't correctly rendering the unicorn symbols for curly apostrophes. I did some tests a while back which is how I worked it out and let spacejunk know what I'd found.

Dunno how to fix it, i don't have much experience operating forums and none with vbulletin. All I know is that it can't properly render the curly apostrophe unicode symbols.

It'll likely happen with any browser using iPhone since it's a function of the keyboard software apple's using. And worse still, it's changing the apostrophe symbols in cut and pastes too.

The problem seems to happen most on iPhones because they seem to be one of the few devices that use those symbols and insert them automatically by default. Even my iPad doesn't do it, just my iPhone. Back when I was using an iPhone anyway.

And worse still its even changing the symbols in cut and paste. If it kept the text correct in cut and paste it wouldn't be affected but ios on iPhone is even swapping those symbols too.

Of course ultimately the problem is the forum software.

Hmm, even if you can't figure out a way to fix the rendering, another possible fix would be if there's a way somewhere to automatically replace all curly apostrophe unicode symbols with dumb ascii apostrophes. Its a bit of a hack rather than a proper fix, but it's an idea. Just a thought.

Good luck guys, glad to know the problems being investigated.
 
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