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

 

[Fredrik]

This is the most recent thread I found about the quick symbols. I would like to suggest a few changes. This is the list of symbols that's used right now.

Ω σ μ ε τ ω
κ α β γ δ η
θ λ π ρ ζ χ
ψ ∞ Θ √ Δ ς
∂ ∑ ∏ ∇ ≈ ≠
≤ ≥ ∫ → ← ∴
ø ° ∠ ƒ ⇔ ∃

For me, the biggest omission by far is ×. I use it all the time to say things like "A×B" or "4×1 matrix". I'd say that it's about twice as useful as all the other symbols combined. And I'm pretty sure it used to be on this list. I would also like to see ·, ℝ, ℂ, ±, ħ. Maybe also ℚ, ℤ but those two are less important. The symbols that seem the least useful to me are ƒ, ∠, ∴, ς, ←, ∃ and maybe also ⇔.

If ∃ is on the list, shouldn't ∀ (for all) be there too? I think ∀ is more useful than ∃. But I don't think I would use either of them. I'll just write out the words (99% of the time) or use LaTeX (1 %) of the time. The logical symbols ¬ (not), ∧ (and) and ∨ (or) could perhaps be useful too, but probably not to me. I would just use LaTeX, $\lnot,\land,\lor$.

I'm pretty confused by some things that are said earlier in this thread. Do you guys not see the same things that I do? Someone referred to these as "alpha" and "sigma": σ α To me the "alpha" is an uppercase I with a ¨ (two dots) on top, followed by a weird f, and the "sigma" is an uppercase I with a ^ on top, followed by a $\pm$.

 

[Borek]

Someone referred to these as "alpha" and "sigma": σ α To me the "alpha" is an uppercase I with a ¨ (two dots) on top, followed by a weird f, and the "sigma" is an uppercase I with a ^ on top, followed by a $\pm$.

That clearly means that problem with displaying some of the symbols is related to their UTF-8 representation being treated not as a single entity, but as several separate characters.

(Whatever it means in this particular case - can be a bug in HTML, can be a bug in a browser, can be something else, it is just obvious what is being mistreated).

 

[SteamKing]

There's a new problem with the Advanced Reply Box which has cropped up in the last couple of days.

The Big Sigma which used to appear at the Right Hand Side of the Menu Bar has disappeared and Quick Symbols apparently cannot be accessed anymore, at least I can't access them. This feature worked for me a couple of days ago, and now, Poof!

I'm using Win 7 Home Premium with Firefox V28.0 as my browser.

 

[Fredrik]

There's a new problem with the Advanced Reply Box which has cropped up in the last couple of days.

The Big Sigma which used to appear at the Right Hand Side of the Menu Bar has disappeared and Quick Symbols apparently cannot be accessed anymore, at least I can't access them. This feature worked for me a couple of days ago, and now, Poof!

I'm using Win 7 Home Premium with Firefox V28.0 as my browser.

It's supposed to be like that in many of the forums here, in particular this one (forum feedback & announcements). Can you try it in a forum that's more math-oriented, like linear algebra or relativity?