After a little more testing I've discovered the newer version of UIBuilder is better about this conversion. Now at least it repares the encoding, so it isn't quite so progressive. It also appears to be using a different encoding that is somewhat better understood by other editors. Looks like my editor of choice understands the new encoding. This is gonna make supporting mutiple sets a ton easier for me :D

In case anyone cares, the potentially problematic entities are...
Oh and the text editor I use is an old version of ColdFusion Studio aka Homesite.

Tried to use Dreamweaver but it freaks out when more than 1 eq2 xml file is open. Didn't actually test the encoding issue.

talking about encoding, I used to be able to handle non-ascii characters for my localized class names functionality just fine (stuff like äöüéèô). The were properly encoded when saved with UIbuilder. Either the encoding has been changed or there is a bug in decoding these things. The text comparison I did regarding the classnames now appears to return true once such a special character is encountered regardless of whether the string really matches.

I had always used Crimson Editor a freeware text editor from http://www.crimsoneditor.com/ , when i used to build website, hand coding the site pages and CSS.

Unless someone knows a good text editor a freeware type, because of the money situation I can't afford a shareware or any other type of text editor.

I also have Open Office 2.0 ( http://www.openoffice.org/ ), the open office writer have 2 xml it can save one is called doc book and the other one is microsoft word 2003 xml.

but even with both of these programs i don't know if either of these program change the encoding or not. unless someone like to check it out and tell me that would be nice.

A simple way to test if your editor is changing the encoding is to do the following:

- Open the default version of eq2ui_mainhud_society.xml in your editor.
- Type a space at the end, delete it, then save the file someplace.
- Now open your edited version in UIBuilder.

While in UIBuilder, inspect the tooltip property for SocietyLevelText. If the apostrohpy has been converted to ' or something other than a simple apostrophy, your editor changed the encoding.

Well I went 'round and 'round trying to find this window in MainHUD.

Didn't the devs take this window out, hence why it is not included the the mainhud.xml file?

Anywho....I added the include line to the mainhud.xml file so I could see the window in UIBuilder, and checked out the tooltip line and the apostrophy was still intact.

I opened and saved the eq2ui_mainhud_society.xml in Microsoft VCExpress.NET

Yah its not included anywhere now, but for this test you can open it directly into UIBuilder.

Hmm...

Just loaded up the files again with EditPlus and it seems the little character is showing now. I'll try and test to see if it's messing up the encoding still or not, but the character's presence (as a little []) does seem enheartening (is that a word?).