Quick Symbols Broken? Troubleshooting Guidance

[Borek]

Is it just me, or are they broken? I see a replacement character instead of two of the characters - one right to the infinity, the other right to capital pi. It wasn't this way before.

 

[OmCheeto]

Is it just me, or are they broken? I see a replacement character instead of two of the characters - one right to the infinity, the other right to capital pi. It wasn't this way before.

I noticed that also.

hmmm... Perhaps someone was trying to fix the 2 x infinity problem, and broke another piece of the PF universe.

But coding is like that, from my experience.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

ah, I switched the character set to UTF-8 from ISO-8859-1 yesterday. I'll look into fixing that soon. Good catch!

 

[ShayanJ]

I don't have them!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I don't have them!

Only in the science/math forums

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

does anyone remember what the broken symbols were before?

 

[OmCheeto]

does anyone remember what the broken symbols were before?

Nie jestem symbolem uczony. Przepraszam.

(I am not a symbol savant. Sorry.)

But I'm going to guess +/- and =

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

But I'm going to guess +/- and =

hmmm prolly not because those are easily accessible on the keyboard

 

[OmCheeto]

hmmm prolly not because those are easily accessible on the keyboard

hmmm... I guess that makes sense.

But then again, why is there a big and little "X"?

And what's that angle looking thing on the bottom supposed to be? Third from the right.

 

[Borek]

Greg: why don't you switch back to ISO for a second

I think Om is 50% right, just he means ±, not +/-. I am sure ± was there in the past.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Greg: why don't you switch back to ISO for a second

Because I'm feeling lazy :D

 

[Borek]

±°±°±

 

[tiny-tim]

i've had the same problem recently typing the degree symbol (alt-shift-8 on a mac)

btw, could i once again make a plea for a decent φ (instead of ∅)?

EDIT: these errors are retrospective, see eg https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=228073 from 2008)​

 

[OmCheeto]

i've had the same problem recently typing the degree symbol (alt-shift-8 on a mac)

btw, could i once again make a plea for a decent φ (instead of ∅)?

EDIT: these errors are retrospective, see eg https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=228073 from 2008)​

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Alt-shift-8

The degree symbol is probably the only symbol I use with any regularity from the quick symbols. I'm surprised I missed that.

And while we are moaning, can we get new alpha and lower case sigma characters? I can barely tell them apart, σ α, unless I make them HUGE.

σ α

My eyes are about as bad as my memory.

 

[Borek]

And while we are moaning, can we get new alpha and lower case sigma characters?

That's not a problem with the forum, but with the default font your (and mine) browser uses.

Whatever it is.

 

[tiny-tim]

hi OmCheeto!

…, can we get new alpha and lower case sigma characters? I can barely tell them apart, σ α, unless I make them HUGE.

σ α

i have no problem with σ, but sfaic the forum's alpha is an "a" …

after experimenting, I've decided always to change it to the Fixedsys font (conveniently near the top of the drop-down menu): α

 

[OmCheeto]

That's not a problem with the forum, but with the default font your (and mine) browser uses.

Whatever it is.

Mine defaults to "default", whatever that is.

I switched it to UTF-8, but that breaks a bunch of tiny-tim's symbols

Not too big a deal I suppose, since I now have all the symbols I need memorized.

α°

Thanks again, tiny-tim!

 

[tiny-tim]

btw, could i once again make a plea for a decent φ (instead of ∅)?

ah, i see the new forum φ !

(and the restored ± and ∀)

thanks, Greg! ​

 

[Borek]

There are two infinities, but no °.

 

[TumblingDice]

I'm running on an ASUS droid tablet and using Opera Classic. There are thirteen of those black-diamond characters 'filler' characters in Tiny-tims signature block.

@Greg: Would the character set change you made require tiny-tim to redo his signature to work properly across all platforms, or do you see this as a droid/Opera issue?

 

[Borek]

Tim has to redo his signature.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I switched back to ISO-8859-1 for the time being. For some reason it wouldn't recognize a bunch of characters. For a stranger reason switching back has totally messed up the quick symbol picker. I'l need to take some time to fix that. Might not have time in the next few days though.

 

[Nugatory]

I switched back to ISO-8859-1

Switched back from what? UTF-8?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Switched back from what? UTF-8?

yes, I think the problem is that the database content is not encoded to UTF-8 so some characters had a problem when the browser forced it to UTF-8

 

[AlephZero]

FWIW the complete train-wreck that I see now (zero correct symbols, and some slots displayed as blank) looks like the "raw data" is in UTF-8 format, but my browser is displaying it as 8-bit ASCII.

This strategy might fix iit:

 

[Enigman]

FWIW the complete train-wreck that I see now (zero correct symbols, and some slots displayed as blank) looks like the "raw data" is in UTF-8 format, but my browser is displaying it as 8-bit ASCII.

This strategy might fix iit:
image telling me to call the Eagle.

Done.

 

[Spacemoss]

I was going to start a thread, but then I saw this one, and think it's related. While looking at posts today all my θ inside tex $$θ$$ (theta, if its not showing right) in old posts are showing as some sort of i-hat.

 

[tiny-tim]

I was going to start a thread, but then I saw this one, and think it's related. While looking at posts today all my θ inside tex $$θ$$ (theta, if its not showing right) in old posts are showing as some sort of i-hat.

i'm getting similar problems, see eg https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=729674

ah, i see the new forum φ !

(and the restored ± and ∀)

thanks, Greg! ​

when i posted that, it made sense!

the first one was φ (but copied from the Quick Symbols, not from my signature), and I'm not sure what the other two were

i see there's now a small null symbol instead of φ: ø …

it is better than the old large one, but can we please have a proper φ back?

P.S why is there a ς‚ symbol in the Quick Symbols box?

it's actually two symbols joined together: ς ‚ … what is it used for??
​

 

[Borek]

Part of the mess is because some people used UTF-8 coded Greek letters in LaTeX formulas. If you want theta in LaTeX you should enter it as \theta, not as θ.

Whenever you see several funny characters instead of one, it is UTF-8 being displayed as ISO-whatever. UTF-8 characters can span over several bytes, with the highest bit set to show next byte contains next part of the character code. When treated as ISO it ends in browser displaying things like "∀" or "ς ‚" Tim mentioned.

 

[Spacemoss]

Part of the mess is because some people used UTF-8 coded Greek letters in LaTeX formulas. If you want theta in LaTeX you should enter it as \theta, not as θ.

Whenever you see several funny characters instead of one, it is UTF-8 being displayed as ISO-whatever. UTF-8 characters can span over several bytes, with the highest bit set to show next byte contains next part of the character code. When treated as ISO it ends in browser displaying things like "∀" or "ς ‚" Tim mentioned.

Yah that was it, I tired viewing in different encodings and I saw it fine. I didn't know that about tex though, I'll use the \theta from now on, thanks