Greek characters showing as char$ codes at some places only

So, I have setup a shop from scratch and I am almost done, customized everything with help from the already existing posts but this one, I just can't find anything exactly the same as mine.

First of all, I have v1.3.9f installed as new and I have installed the Greek language pack. I have altered some tables and fields in phpMyAdmin by changing the MySQL connection collation to greek_general_ci (after install while data in the db) and also changed categories and products size to 256 and collation to greek again. I changed size because Greek where stored as something like this: (965;πρίων Λαϊκων Ποιητών&t) which made the field much larger.

Now the shop displays all Greek characters correctly BUT I have problems with the following cases:

1. When a user registers or buys, the e-mail that he receives displays all the Greek characters that are taken from php files but the data that are taken from the database (i.e. store name, address, etc) which are Greek, are displayed as the example above.
2. When the user check out, the Paypal form shows the purchased item in the same way
3. The Admin console shows Greek ok except the modules (all 3) which cannot detect browser encoding. If I manually select Greek, I will see it but as soon as I click on an option it turns to garbage again.

This is my biggest problem so far. I did my research and found many similar postings but not exactly as this. Any help apreciated.

Update:

I noticed that the Greek.php file in Admin folder was:
define('CHARSET', 'iso-8859-1');
although the normal one was:
define('CHARSET', 'ISO-8859-7');

I changed the admin to 'ISO-8859-7'
and:

1. All characters in Admin/modules where ok
2. Paypal checkout and email still shows ##dfd#d#fdf#sd#f# like before
3. Now if I edit the greek names in configuration that before appeared as above, now they appear as ????????

I changed to utf-8 but now they appear as diamonds.

I changed to as it was before and at least now the #fdsf#sd#fd#f codes translate back to Greek.

I think I made quite a progress and I haven't seen this in other posts.

This is what I did:
In phpMyAdmin, I changed default db collation to UTF8-unicode-ci. I did the same for all tables and fileds that contain greek.

For Admin and shop I used iso-8859-7.

Now:

• Admin/modules shows Greek characters
• In configuration, categories, products, after the data is entered in Greek, it stays Greek, not #f#fd#fdf#f#df#
• e-mails sent to users are in Greek and not #f#dfg#dfg#dfg#

However:

• codes like "&trade , #euro, etc.) are transformed to ##fgd#gf
• phpMyAdmin cannot show the greek characters. I don't care but I am concerned. If it doesn't show there, maybe it won't show somewhere else as well.
• Biggest issue is that Paypal express checkout shows the description as a row of squares which if I try to copy/paste here, appear as diamonds. (�����). This one I really don't know how to start fixing. I tried modifying Paypal webpage encoding but it doesn't seem to matter. Please help at least on this one.

You need to use the SAME character set everywhere. If you want to use iso-8859-7, then use that everywhere. But, since your database probably doesn't give you that option, best to choose UTF-8.
So, use UTF-8 (utf8-general-ci) in your database, for the database, all the tables, and all the fields inside those tables.
And, in Zen Cart, use UTF-8 as well.
Then, re-edit ALL your language files and save them as UTF8-without-BOM encoding, fixing all the text to display properly.
Then, re-edit ALL your database data that you've entered from the admin side, and fix all the characters so they display properly.
Then, set your PayPal encoding to UTF-8 as well.

Once you have everything set to the same character set, AND you've re-edited everything so all the characters display properly in that character set, things should work fine.

Mixing character sets is always going to give you trouble.

DrByte:

You need to use the SAME character set everywhere. If you want to use iso-8859-7, then use that everywhere. But, since your database probably doesn't give you that option, best to choose UTF-8.
So, use UTF-8 (utf8-general-ci) in your database, for the database, all the tables, and all the fields inside those tables.
And, in Zen Cart, use UTF-8 as well.
Then, re-edit ALL your language files and save them as UTF8-without-BOM encoding, fixing all the text to display properly.
Then, re-edit ALL your database data that you've entered from the admin side, and fix all the characters so they display properly.
Then, set your PayPal encoding to UTF-8 as well.

Once you have everything set to the same character set, AND you've re-edited everything so all the characters display properly in that character set, things should work fine.

Mixing character sets is always going to give you trouble.

UTF-8 in php files will result in diamonds being displayed and the files layout being damaged (even if I reedit text in the db).

I already edited all the text I entered and I believe it is fine now. I don't know how the Paypal page works though. I don;'t think that encoding option in paypal matters because I tried to change to something like chineese or russian and nothing changed there. I believe it has to do with how zen cart exports it there. Do you have any idea of the control that handles this?

Zen Cart reads the data from your language files and from the database, and sends it to PayPal the same way it sends it to the screen and to email for order confirmations.

DrByte:

Zen Cart reads the data from your language files and from the database, and sends it to PayPal the same way it sends it to the screen and to email for order confirmations.

Yes, of course, I understand this. The issue is that it displays the characters on the screen and email correctly but only on Paypal checkout as squares. There must be something different there. Why does it send my product names in Greek by email but to Paypal as squares?

Maybe it has to do with Paypal? I changed the options there. However I am not sure if it keeps them because if I select one of the standard languages there (4-5) - (Chineese, russian, etc.) it keeps them. If I go to more options and select UTF-8 or iso 8859-7, when I retun, I always see western so I am not sure if it keeps that setting. If I select Korean, it will be there later.

You may have to ask PayPal about that.

DrByte:

You may have to ask PayPal about that.

Ok, Paypal confirmed that they cannot support non-English characters at the moment.

So, the only way for this to work is while I am working in Greek, only at Paypal checkout to pass the English product name instead of the Greek one.

Does anyone know how I could achieve this or maybe it is not possible?

DrByte:

You need to use the SAME character set everywhere. If you want to use iso-8859-7, then use that everywhere. But, since your database probably doesn't give you that option, best to choose UTF-8.
So, use UTF-8 (utf8-general-ci) in your database, for the database, all the tables, and all the fields inside those tables.
And, in Zen Cart, use UTF-8 as well.
Then, re-edit ALL your language files and save them as UTF8-without-BOM encoding, fixing all the text to display properly.
Then, re-edit ALL your database data that you've entered from the admin side, and fix all the characters so they display properly.
Then, set your PayPal encoding to UTF-8 as well.

Once you have everything set to the same character set, AND you've re-edited everything so all the characters display properly in that character set, things should work fine.

Mixing character sets is always going to give you trouble.

Hallo,

I have performed those steps, everything works fine with zen-cart, emails, database etc.

However, when it comes to PayPal IPN, I see diamonds in all fields of credit card payment, (name surname, address) except for the optional second line of the address which is the only one that appears in fine Greek letters!!!

Wow! How can this be done? This line is saved in the same database entry along with the other data (name surname address etc). Why does it appear OK, while the other data appear as diamonds?

When I tried express checkout, all Greek letters were perfectly transfered from paypal to zen cart. Seems like the other way round has a partial (!) issue.

Kind regards,
orange_juice

Paypal answered the following:

Your buyer is seeing these diamonds because his PayPal account settings are picking the wrong encoding. You will need to submit the correct encoding in the PayPal transaction variable "charset". Please see the following page:

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_html_formbasics.

The relevant entry is the following, but they did not answer on why one line forms the exception. However, they imply that it is the module's issue and not theirs.

Setting the Character Set – charset

You can use the charset HTML variable to specify the character set or character encoding of the data you collect in your website forms and send to PayPal. PayPal sends data to you in the same character set or encoding you specify with the charset variable. For example, the following INPUT tag sets the encoding to UTF-8:

Kind regards,
orange_juice

If your Zen Cart store is operating in a language for which you've configured the CHARSET to be utf-8, then that will automatically be passed to PayPal when the data is submitted.

DrByte:

If your Zen Cart store is operating in a language for which you've configured the CHARSET to be utf-8, then that will automatically be passed to PayPal when the data is submitted.

Thank you Dr Byte. I wish PayPal could also be so accurate. I will insist asking them why that line appears OK and all the others not!

Kind regards,
orange_juice

You'll likely have less issues if you use Express Checkout instead.

I will try again express checkout, more relaxed this time ...

Thank you for your support!

Kind regards,
orange_juice

Is it possible to please get the step by step details for us to have the greek language work as well as the english.

We have everything installed including the greek pack but looks like not everything is working properly especially on the admin side and the emails.

We have installed ver 1.3

Thanks

boomer.az:

We have everything installed including the greek pack but looks like not everything is working properly especially on the admin side and the emails.

We have installed ver 1.3

Hallo!

You did not mention what are the problems that you are facing. However, the most probable is that you did not make a copy of the admin's English language directory to the relevant Greek that does not exist.

Step by step explanation is the following:

Ver 1.3 is probably ancient! You must install Zen-Cart-1.3.9h (if you have not already done)

Then proceed by installing the Greek language pack

However, bear in mind that this pack is only for the storefront. In order to have zen-cart working OK, you will have to duplicate the directory

admin/includes/languages/english

under the name

admin/includes/languages/greek

This way, you will have a fully functional English admin section and a bilingual store front.

Kind regards,
orange_juice

Thank you (Efxaristo):

All works except that I cannot get the HTML text editor to show when I am sending email in Greek or any other place when my admin is set to Greek.

When I switch to English it appears whereby I can use different color fonts.......etc

Thank you

Parakalo!

You can also check this mini tutorial to see if everything has been done correctly:

dotservant.com/knowledgebase/zencart/installzencartlanguage.shtml

In case your question is still not answered, please start a new thread here on the Zen Cart site with the relevant subject.

Kind regards,
orange_juice

Orange,

I have tried everything and still no html editor when using admin in greek, more so the send email module.

Any ideas or help?

Efxaristo