Special characters

[FraGard]

When I try
Jekyll serve
An error appears, due to special characters detected during the conversion of the modules to .html files.

These are identified as special characters, as far as I saw with the first modules:
'''
'...'
'-'
ü (in references, like Müller et al.)

[lorenzo-sani]

Hi @FraGard I created a function to deal with this issue, it transforms the special characters as follows:
''' to '
... to .. .
'-' to _
ü to u
let me know if it works or if there are other problems with it

[FraGard]

Thanks! I think ü is usually transformed to ue.

I found other characters the python code does not like:

• greek letters (capital and not);
• the signs 'less than or equal to' (unicode: ) and 'greater than or equal to' (unicode: )
• one module also has a problem with a BYTE ORDER MARK (zero width no-break space). Its code is \ufeff. I cannot find it in the ppt.

There are many more characters I imagine, since the jekyll serve is still not working for most presentations now. I wonder whether there is a more efficient way to do this? Any way to turn all unknown characters into something, instead of blocking the conversion? Modules should in principle be uploaded by people all over the world, with all sorts of languages and strange signs in their presentations.

[willu47]

There is a way to deal with this - https://docs.python.org/3/library/codecs.html

[lorenzo-sani]

Honestly, I think that here the problem it's still related to something that is not working correctly with @FraGard's configuration of Python/Jekyll/html because I tried to convert a module with any kind of strange character and it works just fine. However, I have no idea on where the problem could be there

[willu47]

It could well be a Windows/Linux issue. Unless we can recreate the issue, we cannot fix it - best to understand first the conditions needed to recreate this unwanted behaviour. By doing that, you'll normally identify the problem. Still, not a priority for the moment.