+Thathanka Posted February 4, 2010 Share Posted February 4, 2010 I would like to ask for possibility to use national letters in cache description. For me, Polish speaking geocacher, lack of specific signs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_alphabet ) is a problem because it changes meaning of words. Another thing: it looks really bad. Thank you for consideration. Link to comment
+elales Posted February 5, 2010 Share Posted February 5, 2010 I entirely agree. The Polish descriptions without Polish specific letters look not only weird but the system makes impression of being outdated and not flexible. Link to comment
+TomPL Posted February 5, 2010 Share Posted February 5, 2010 I'm connecting to this post I have the same opinion about this case. Sometimes, when I'm searching caches in Poland and they have national letters in their names, I have a problem. For example: "Płaszów", "Plaszow", "Plaszów" or "Płaszow" is not the same. Link to comment
toczygroszek Posted February 5, 2010 Share Posted February 5, 2010 I've mentioned about this many times. And many other geocachers from other countries. There is many threads about this problem posted during last few years. This is the explanation by OpinioNate: Yes, that is what I meant - all the characters requested are not available due to restrictions in the tools we use. I'm very sorry and I know it is frustrating for you. We couldn't be more aware of the issue so you don't need to resurrect old threads. We have a plan to fix the problem and will make every effort to get it done. Thanks for being patient with us. So, we are patient, but how long will we wait for this change? 1st question about international characters was asked if I remember 3 years ago. And still promises and no real change. It's really frustrating and many people for that reason don't register their caches on Geocaching.com website. Is not one character missing, there are all our Polish specific characters what we can't display. Try imagine if every your English "v" will be changed to "w" or "x" to "y". So is any chance to fix this problem soon? If yes, when will be that "soon"? Thanks. Link to comment
+Thathanka Posted February 5, 2010 Author Share Posted February 5, 2010 Try imagine if every your English "v" will be changed to "w" or "x" to "y". Good point. To be precise, each traditional cache is actually a puzzle cache for Polish geocacher. Link to comment
GOF and Bacall Posted February 5, 2010 Share Posted February 5, 2010 One of the reasons sited for the changes in the last big update was to prepare for the availability of alternate languages on the site. I don't know if that extends all the way to the cache page though. Link to comment
toczygroszek Posted February 5, 2010 Share Posted February 5, 2010 (edited) This is the information: Localizing will enable us to provide the non-English speaking community with a more friendly site by translating common pages and navigation into various languages. Will that include specific characters? Edited February 5, 2010 by toczygroszek Link to comment
+HighlanderPL Posted February 5, 2010 Share Posted February 5, 2010 It's really frustrating and many people for that reason don't register their caches on Geocaching.com website. Is not one character missing, there are all our Polish specific characters what we can't display. I agree with You - lots of people in Poland is waiting for this functionality. I hope that this feature will get higher priority than I has now. Link to comment
+Nils-Olov Posted February 6, 2010 Share Posted February 6, 2010 (edited) I don't like to be 'the wise guy' but when I checked the source code I found that the character encoding line is missing. I also ran the w3c validator at http://validator.w3.org/check and they are reporting a lot of errors and warnings. I do design some web pages myself and to be sure I haven't done any big mistakes I always use the validator. It seems that GC is using a tool that isn't compatible with the HTML standard and that is a pity. This forum has the character encoding defined to ISO 8859-1 which is western Europe. If I was GC I would prefered to use UTF-8 because it's ability to cope with not only western languages. I just have to try to write some of the national characters used in Sweden. Here they come ÅÄÖåäöÜüÉé. That works here in the forum, good. Edited February 6, 2010 by nils-Olov Link to comment
+dfx Posted February 6, 2010 Share Posted February 6, 2010 the forum uses the latin-1 character set yes, but the cache listings are utf-8. the html of the pages doesn't say so, but the http headers do: Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 so, you can just use any utf-8 characters in the cache listings and it should work right. that includes all polish characters. Link to comment
+sTeamTraen Posted February 6, 2010 Share Posted February 6, 2010 (edited) As noted above, the Geocaching.com site generates pages in UTF-8. The problem, as I understand it, is with some of the tools used to validate input. Ideally, those could be quickly replaced, but on a big complex site with a lot of history, a lot of stuff would probably break. Edited February 6, 2010 by sTeamTraen Link to comment
+Nils-Olov Posted February 7, 2010 Share Posted February 7, 2010 I'm sorry to say that I can't find any line with content-type in the pages I have looked at. I have been looking at 'Your Profile' and one cache description. I'm using Firefox and view source. And as I said before the w3c validator couldn't find it either. Maybe I have managed to find the two pages where it is missing? When it comes to entering text I know how to do it in Java servlets because I have made the mistake myself and corrected it. Link to comment
+kunarion Posted February 7, 2010 Share Posted February 7, 2010 (edited) Just testing text entry (using character codes). It behaves a little strangely here in the forums (I must preview it twice before it all looks right). But it's fine in my cache description: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...91-e2d542c4bb8e (see the test sample line of characters just above the "Additional Hints" section. This probably isn't what you're asking for (it is tedious to enter text using ASCII numerical codes). And if you paste the text directly, the letters get changed. I was just curious to see how it displays. I should also mention that GC's "new improvements" are at least causing minor problems with plain-text cache descriptions, so you should be using HTML, anyway. Polish language characters follow: ĄąĘęÓóĆ棳ŃńŚśŹźŻż Edited February 7, 2010 by kunarion Link to comment
+Thathanka Posted February 7, 2010 Author Share Posted February 7, 2010 (edited) I should also mention that GC's "new improvements" are at least causing minor problems with plain-text cache descriptions, so you should be using HTML, anyway. Polish language characters follow: ĄąĘęÓóĆ棳ŃńŚśŹźŻż Thank you for your response. You are right - using national characters is possible, but you have to admit it is faaaar from "simple" or "intuitive". I strongly believe that "The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site" is able to offer something much more friendly for non-American/English geocachers than typing HTML code for each national character. Does Groundspeak plan to apply a WYSIWYG editor? Edited February 7, 2010 by Thathanka Link to comment
+dakboy Posted February 7, 2010 Share Posted February 7, 2010 I'm sorry to say that I can't find any line with content-type in the pages I have looked at. I have been looking at 'Your Profile' and one cache description. I'm using Firefox and view source. And as I said before the w3c validator couldn't find it either. Maybe I have managed to find the two pages where it is missing? No, you're not finding it because it shouldn't be there in there. content-type is one of the HTTP header variables. You can view the HTTP headers for any page using http://web-sniffer.net/ Link to comment
+Thathanka Posted February 9, 2010 Author Share Posted February 9, 2010 For those who want use national characters I recommend this 'Unicode to HTML converter': http://www.unicodetools.com/unicode/convert-to-html.php Now it's the simplest solution (althought not simple), but I hope Groundspek will show its mercy and will make it easier. I know it is an American website, but it is aspiring to be "global", so do not let people feel that they are second category. Link to comment
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