newbie: weird char display problem

[michaelbr]

I have an epub2 file, which displays fine with Foliate on Linux, but on Moon+Reader on Android, displays weird char for single quote. Sigil tells me that the encoding and charset are both UTF-8. How can i go to fix this problem? I tried to change it to ISO-8859-1 (I saw in the internet that this sometime fix the problem), but not in my case.

[hobnail]

It sounds like the font is missing that glyph. Try using a different font and see what happens, e.g., one from google.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by michaelbr

I have an epub2 file, [...] displays weird char for single quote. Sigil tells me that the encoding and charset are both UTF-8. How can i go to fix this problem?

I'm betting it's a character that looks like an apostrophe, but isn't.

Many times, people accidentally use ` GRAVE ACCENT (the little key to the left of '1') instead of ‘ LEFT SINGLE QUOTE.

This is an `example´ of grave and acute accent. (Wrong)
This is an ‘example’ of left and right single quote. (Correct)

It should just be as easy as copying the character that's funny and Search/Replacing it with the proper character:

Grave -> Left Single Quote

Search: `
Replace: ‘

Acute -> Right Single Quote

Search: ´
Replace: ’

To Spot Other Strange Characters

In Sigil, Press Tools > Reports > Characters in HTML Files.

Scroll through the list, and look for anything that looks like a "weird" apostrophe.

Then you could double-click on a character in the list, and Sigil should jump you to its location in the code.

These 3 are correct:

• ' APOSTROPHE (U+0027)
  
  • This is the key on your keyboard.
• ‘ LEFT SINGLE QUOTE (U+2018)
• ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTE (U+2019)

If dealing with double quotes, these 3 are correct too:

• " QUOTATION MARK (U+0022)
  
  • This is the key on your keyboard.
• “ LEFT DOUBLE QUOTE (U+201C)
• ” RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTE (U+201D)

Any other quote-looking characters should probably be inspected.

[michaelbr]

Thanks all for your reply, I'll try out your suggestions during this weekend to see if it'll fix the problem.
@Tex2002ans, thanks for the tips for Sigil, learned something new today.

[michaelbr]

Originally Posted by michaelbr

Thanks all for your reply, I'll try out your suggestions during this weekend to see if it'll fix the problem.

Here's an update, I'm afraid I messed up pretty good the file I was working on, I think when I tried to change from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1, I did not reverse back the changes I made, so the weird char got worse and it took me several hours trying to fix it, at the end I gave up. Got a back up file and now everything is fine. Thanks so much for your suggestions.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by michaelbr

... so the weird char got worse ...

Sorry, but that made me laugh. The demonic char from hell.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by michaelbr

Got a back up file and now everything is fine. Thanks so much for your suggestions.

Great to hear.

But what was the weird character? Can you copy/paste it here?

Originally Posted by michaelbr

Here's an update, I'm afraid I messed up pretty good the file I was working on, I think when I tried to change from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1, I did not reverse back the changes I made, so the weird char got worse and it took me several hours trying to fix it, at the end I gave up.

EPUB files only use UTF-8, so when you tried changing the encoding, that wasn't a good idea either.

You see this pretty often when characters like the:

— (EM DASH)

turn into:

–

Good tools like Calibre should be able to convert to UTF-8 properly.

But if you already mangled your original beyond repair... usually it's best to do what you did—start from your last good backup.