[Dspace-general] Diacritics (was: subscripts in abstracts)

[Donna Barber]

Hi Alvin,

We are also batch importing content and have had similar problems. We find and replace the most commonly used characters with the Unicode character code, and this seems to fix most occurrences. Occasionally we come across a character that we aren't automatically replacing, so we just look up the code in the Unicode charts (http://www.unicode.org/charts/) and edit the XML file before loading.

For example, you should be able to replace all instances of á with á and all ' with '

Sometimes garbled characters get through the import process without causing errors. We've found that you can enter the correct code straight into the DSpace submission form or item edit screen - however, you normally need to click the update button a couple of times before the character will display correctly.

Donna Barber
Applications Support Librarian
Central Library
University of Canterbury
Te Whare Wananga o Waitaha
Christchurch, New Zealand
ph: +64 3 3642987 ext 8601

-----Original Message-----
From: dspace-general-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:dspace-general-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of Hutchinson, Alvin
Sent: Thursday, 7 June 2007 4:28 a.m.
To: dspace-general at mit.edu
Cc: Pilsk, Suzanne; Rups, Mario
Subject: [Dspace-general] Diacritics (was: subscripts in abstracts)

Dspace users-

We are also wrestling with a similar problem regarding subscript, diacritics or other nonstandard characters. I am batch-importing Dspace content from a Microsoft Access database that I export to XML. Accented, scientific and other characters are not translating well. Many of the characters are encoded for html as in: ' or á but the importer identifies these as undeclared elements. If I change them to their actual characters ' or á in an editor before importing, they become garbled when I upload the file to the (Unix) server.

I have tried changing the UTF-8 encoding designation but with no luck. I am willing to do a global find-and-replace to get the characters right but I haven't found the right replacement characters.

I may have to end up editing these items by hand after they are imported but I would obviously like to avoid that.

Is anyone else doing likewise and/or having similar problems?

Alvin Hutchinson
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
(202) 633-1031
 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 09:58:25 +0100
From: "Nockels, K.H." <khn5 at leicester.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Dspace-general] Subscripts in abstracts
To: <dspace-general at mit.edu>
Message-ID:
	<286C9166197E0C44B94FF9762B27DAC70DD902EC at sumac.cfs.le.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Dear All,

I only see the digest of this list so have only just seen the messages about this, which started with Marty Courtois' question about subscripts and superscripts in abstracts.

I have had the same problem, and also a problem with accented characters in other European languages.  We have an application called Character
Map, which looks to be a Microsoft product.   It is installed on the
University network here.

I can select the character I want in Character Map, and then copy and paste it directly into the DSpace submission form.  This solves the problem most of the time.

I don't think it has italic characters, but am not sure.

Hope this helps, 

Best wishes,




Keith 

Keith Nockels
Leicester Research Archive Manager
University of Leicester
Leicester, England - UK

Postal address: Clinical Sciences Library, University of Leicester, RKCSB, PO Box 65, Leicester LE2 7LX, UK Tel. +44 (0)116 252 3101
Email: lra at le.ac.uk 

Leicester Research Archive: promoting the University's research.  
Visit http://www.le.ac.uk/library/research/archive.html for more information.  






------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Dspace-general mailing list
Dspace-general at mit.edu
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/dspace-general


End of Dspace-general Digest, Vol 47, Issue 7
*********************************************

_______________________________________________
Dspace-general mailing list
Dspace-general at mit.edu
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/dspace-general