process special Word quote chartacters in jsp

[Joshua Cloch]

Hello guys,

My problem is : when I send an email using my website application, the website automatically changes some special marks like ' to ? .

Any ideas?

Thanks a lot.

[Bear edit: changed topic title to make this easier to search for in the future]
[ February 16, 2007: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Bear Bibeault]

You'll need to give us a lot more detail than that. How are you generating these quotes? With Word or other document processing software? If so, those programs use special characters for opening and closing quotes.

[Joshua Cloch]

Yes, Microsoft Word is used to generate the document first, which is then copied and moved to the website.

I have also copied the same content and tested it using yahoomail or googlemail, it works well. So, I guess there must be some solutions.

Any ideas?
[ February 16, 2007: Message edited by: Joshua Cloch ]

[Bear Bibeault]

Either replace the special chaeracters that Word uses for quotes, or set Word up to not use them in the first place.

[William Brogden]

Microsoft calls those little troublemakers "smart" quotes and other punctuation. Here a routine I use:

   // replace Word processor smart quotes and ' with ascii if flag set
  String fixWordSmart( String s ){
    if( !fixSmart ||
         s == null ||
         s.length() == 0 ){
           return s ;
    }
    s = s.replace( (char)145, (char)'\'');
    s = s.replace( (char)8216, (char)'\''); // left single quote
    s = s.replace( (char)146, (char)'\'');
    s = s.replace( (char)8217, (char)'\''); // right single quote
    s = s.replace( (char)147, (char)'\"');
    s = s.replace( (char)148, (char)'\"');
    s = s.replace( (char)8220, (char)'\"'); // left double
    s = s.replace( (char)8221, (char)'\"'); // right double
    s = s.replace( (char)8211, (char)'-' ); // em dash??    
    return s.replace( (char)150, (char)'-' );
  }
      

Bill

[Bear Bibeault]

Brilliant, William! Providing the character codes will certainly be helpful to many who also experience this problem.

I've changed the topic title to better reflect the issue so that this solution will be easier to find in future searches.

[Bear Bibeault]

With William's permission, I have added a new JSP FAQ entry containing his code fragment. Thanks William!
[ February 16, 2007: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Joshua Cloch]

Thanks guys. I have tested it and it works pretty well.