apos '
 

I'm just wondering what extreemely simple thing I'm missing here. I want to display apostrophes in text. UIBuilder changes them to ' but both the game and uibuilder don't seem to chenge those back to '. I'm afraid to leave naked apostrophes in my xml.

Is there a way to make them display? Or is it just another (lovable) quirk of eq2?

You have to do a search-and-replace with a text editor, unfortunately.

Personally, I just count it as yet another reason not to bother with the UI builder. :D

-- Darryl (Milquetowst), probably the only modder who *doesn't* use the UI builder for anything.

The problem your facing is due to improper UTF encoding.

Files that don't contain the opening UTF encoding string with the proper [] symbol intact will have progressive amp and apos conversion problems. That special character tells UIBuilder and the EQ2 Client how reserved characters are converted. If its removed or changed, the conversion gets botched.

Virtually every editor I've tried other than UIBuilder and Notepad will change that encoding character, usually resulting in thr progressive problem as follows...

1st save converts ' to '
2nd save converts ' to '
3rd save converts ' to '
etc..

To correct the problem, open any default file in Notepad, copy from the first opening bracket to the second opening bracket. Something like...
Past into your bugged file. Delete the extra opening bracket if not needed. I include it in the copy selection just to be sure all the encoding is captured.

Once that's done, if you must use an editor other than UIBuilder or Notepad, I suggest...

1) open the file in Notepad
2) copy/paste to your editor
3) make changes
4) copy/replace all but the encoding (preserving the original encoding) back to Notepad
5) save

I personally hardly ever press the save button in the uibuilder any more unless I just flat forget. I'll make my changes in the builder and the take the loc's over to ultraedit and save.

I could be wrong but from all I read about file encoding (utf-8,16, ect) is decided by the 1st two bytes of the file, so I don't know why anything after that is botching up the file. Even saving the file using the MSXML 4.0 dll, it sets the 1st two bytes in the file and strips the two after the header. Zonx is right about the UIBUIlder though if its missing the two bytes after the header the UIBilder will hack it up when u save in it.

Ok, thanks guys... I ran a working file through a hex editer after reading your responses. Apparently there's 4 special characters that are needed.

Before the "<?XML" there's 3 characters Chr(239), Chr(187), Chr(191) and then after is a Chr(10). You need all 4 for the game to display the file correctly.

Thanks for putting me on the right path.