Velocity Reviews - Strange behaviour with UTF-8 encoding

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Strange behaviour with UTF-8 encoding

I have 2 supposedly identical Windows 2000 web servers each with IIS5.
Both have the ASPCODEPAGE set to 65001 (utf-8) in the metabase. The
first server has been running pages like the one below for a long time
and the output has been correct ie. the ™ character and international
characters have displayed correctly (except that the ™ has never
displayed correctly in the titlebar). My problem is that the second
server is not displaying these characters correctly. Here's an example
of the asp code:

************************************************** *********************
<%@ Language=VBScript%>

<%Response.CharSet = "utf-8"%>

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8;">

<TITLE>Tradename™</TITLE>

</HEAD>

<body>
Náttúruverndarsvæði Tradename™
</body>
</HTML>
************************************************** ***********************

The ™ displays as ? and the icelandic characters are garbled. If I
choose View > Encoding > Autoselect (turn off autoselect) and then View
> Encoding > Autoselect (turn on autoselect) IE6 selects Western European rather than utf-8 and the page is correct (including the titlebar).

I have discovered that if I save the asp file as UTF-8 in notepad the
characters display correctly.

Here's the strange thing.. Although existing pages on the first server
are working fine, if I create the above test page these characters are
wrong on that server too. Once again if I save it as utf-8 it works. I
have opened some of the old pages in notepad and tried File > Save As
to see what their current encoding is and it is always ANSI, which
according to the new tests I'm running, should not work..

Also, if I copy a working page from server 1 to server 2 it doesnt work
on server 2 so it can't be the encoding of the file.

So my question is why would one page with the same character, the same
charset in the page and the same file encoding be rendered differently?
Is there a configuration setting I have missed that forces ASP pages to
be encoded in utf-8?

I would appreciate your comments.

Thanks

Re: Strange behaviour with UTF-8 encoding

Ah... looks like the encoding of this page is messing with the
characters too!

The character I'm having problems with is © (the trademark symbol)
and the icelandic character set (see
http://www.icetourist.is/default.asp?cat_id=1 for an example). I
realise I can simply use the © code instead of the TM but the
icelandic is more of a problem.

Re: Strange behaviour with UTF-8 encoding

I meant "™" for TM

Re: Strange behaviour with UTF-8 encoding

Further info.. the code example above doesn't work on any server
because it needs to be output in a response.write to pick up the
response.charset. This still doesn't work on my second server.

************************************************** *********************

<%@ Language=VBScript%>

<%Response.CharSet = "utf-8"%>

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=utf-8;">

<%= "<TITLE>Trademark™</TITLE>"%>

</HEAD>

<body>
<%= "Trademark™"%>
</body>
</HTML>
************************************************** ***********************

Re: Strange behaviour with UTF-8 encoding

I finally solved this problem. Session state wasn't enabled in IIS

Properties > Home Directory > Configuration > App Options > Tick the
Enable Session State checkbox

My understanding of this is that the codepage declaration is held in
the session and if one isnt enabled it gets ignored. If anybody can
give me a better explanation Id be interested to hear.