ARCHIVED: In Oncourse, what do I need to know about using the UTF-8 character set?

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Important:
Oncourse is retired. For details, see ARCHIVED: About the Oncourse retirement.

Oncourse supports the UTF-8 encoding form of Unicode, which allows the use of alphabets and character sets other than standard Latin. In Oncourse, you can use alternate character sets to type text in any text box in any of the tools (e.g., Forums, Syllabus, Messages, Chat). You can copy and paste text from a UTF-8 compliant application into Oncourse. In most cases, you can also use alternate characters in file names.

For information on using your keyboard to input alternate character sets, see:

Known issues with the use of alternate character sets in Oncourse include:

  • Note: Pasting text into the rich-text editor should preserve most formatting, but some types of formatting may need to be added manually in the editor after pasting. You can also use the Paste from Word icon to paste from a Microsoft Word document, although this may not preserve every type of formatting. For details, see ARCHIVED: Pasting from Microsoft Word.

  • When creating a file to upload into Oncourse, a few programs may require you to explicitly save the file as a Unicode text file.
  • If you use the Download All function in Assignments, and you use a browser to view the resulting files on your computer, you may need to set the browser to UTF-8 in order to view feedback and submissions. Some browsers may perform better than others.
  • The Unicode text format is not compatible with the comma-separated value (.csv) format. Since the Gradebook and PostEm tools use .csv files to export and import data out of and into Oncourse, alternate characters are not preserved in these files.
  • When uploading files to Oncourse (as attachments to items or otherwise), do not use any ARCHIVED: unsupported characters in filenames. Filenames that contain unsupported characters may appear to upload successfully, but when users click those files, they will get errors.
  • If you use alternate characters in the Calendar tool, they will be rendered correctly on the screen but not in the printed version of the calendar.
  • If you export a Wiki page as a .pdf file, alternate characters will not be rendered correctly in the .pdf file.

This is document axzl in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 16:13:55.