Occasional font encoding problem -- specific page and specific browser

[Marvin_Martiano]

I have a bilingual website installed as Joomla 1.6 and upgraded over time 1.7 / 2.5 / 3.0. It has a template (based long ago on the Beez20 accessible template) that declares itself UTF-8 in the head with a <meta> tag, and it works correctly in all browsers encountered. So far so good.

I've got an error.php template that's the regular correctly-working index.php but with all nonessentials stripped (no nav menu, for starters), just simplified, and then the essential bits from the regular error.php template inserted. So you get lines like

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<h2><?php echo JText::_('JERROR_AN_ERROR_HAS_OCCURRED'); ?><br />
<?php echo JText::_('JERROR_LAYOUT_PAGE_NOT_FOUND'); ?> <strong> </h2>

which are read from the language's .ini file (like /language/en-US/en-US.ini for american english). These files themselves are correctly set to UTF8 says my editor.

Now, the issue is, if I type in a nonsense URL on my page to get a 404 screen while set to an accent-heavy language, it looks correct in Firefox but has typical encoding errors in (an updated) Chrome and Safari. Switching computer I get the same (Firefox OK, Chrome and Safari bad). Recognizable errors are e.g., "à" becomes "Ã " [see e.g. http://www.i18nqa.com/debug/utf8-debug.html ].

Any idea where to look? As said, both index.php and error.php declare themselves UTF8, it's correct in Firefox, and in all browsers the normal pages show correct accents within the articles.

EDIT: temporarily adding a menu item that caused system text (login form) to be displayed, I saw correct accents in all browsers there... so it seems to be error.php's fault? (Not allowed to attach .php file.)

[itoctopus]

What happens when you add the following to the very beginning of the error.php file:

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header('Content-Type: charset=utf-8');

OR

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mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");

[Marvin_Martiano]

Neither has an effect! They also don't seem to make a difference to the HTML output (I put in a trivial change to verify it's indeed updating correctly; I'm not accidentally looking at cache)?

I've put it in various places in the opening ?php statement, namely before/after the "exec or die", and before/after the JHTML-declaration, and either and both of the versions you suggest: No effect. Chrome > View > Encoding > Autodetect keeps saying the error page is Windows1252, the rest of the site UTF8.

[Marvin_Martiano]

BTW, a sample of 404 pages is http://lucaleonelli.org/refresh/it/blah. I cannot post or attach PHP so here's the best i can come up with, a screenshot of it (further reduced to fit screen)...

Screenshot 2016-06-26 13.07.14.png

[Per Yngve Berg]

Add a to the head section of your error page.

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<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

[infograf768]

Set your preferences in Chrome and Safari

Screen Shot 2016-06-26 at 15.34.55.png

Screen Shot 2016-06-26 at 15.36.47.png

[Marvin_Martiano]

Hi Per,
That line is there already (2 lines before end of head section); unless I have a typo and then it's explained.

Hi Infograph,
But as a solution that would mean that I change the settings OF ALL MY VISITORS? I don't mind what happens with my computer, it's the site's users that need to see it. So indeed my defaults were Windows-1252 [and Firefox to "default for current locale", but that's not specified what encoding that is -- I'm in UK and setting is en-US anyway], and hence the problem showed...

So all this means that someway my <meta ... charset=utf-8"> is getting ignored? I don't get it.

[Marvin_Martiano]

Problem solved!

Going to the W3C validator (and choosing "validate error pages") I found that my doctype declaration was inconsistent.

Apparently Firefox was right in prioritizing the UTF8 declaration and Safari and Chrome weren't; but after correcting (using xhtml 4.01 transitional) now the problem is solved, and all tested browsers show the correct accents.