German umlauts in location code does not work

[swilde]

Hi *,

I just tried to use the forcast plugin for the city I'm living in:
Osnabrück, Germany.
The "Find Code" function was of no use to me (no results) but the site

http://www.accuweather.com/world-index-forecast.asp?partner=forecastfox&traveler=0&locCode=EUR|DE|GM009|Osnabr%FCck&metric=1

exists (and works) so I tried "EUR|DE|GM009|Osnabrück" as code,
unfortunately with no luck, I even tried "EUR|DE|GM009|Osnabr%FCck"
but that didn't work either (and yield an error).

I guess that the problem is that accuweather.com expects the umlaut
latin-1 encoded and forcast presumingly sends it utf-8 encoded...

Is this a known issue? Are there any workarounds (or plans to fix
this)?

I'd really like to use the forcast plugin and I'd expect there are
many more people in Germany facing the same problem (we have many
locations with umlauts in there names...).

I'm using Firefox 3.6 on GNU/Linux.

cheers
sascha

[rj]

You can work around this by entering Osnabruck instead. The code would
then be EUR|DE|GM009|OSNABRUCK|

Cheers

[swilde]

> I guess that the problem is that accuweather.com expects the umlaut
> latin-1 encoded and forcast presumingly sends it utf-8 encoded...

On a slightly closer look this guess was false. Using the encoded
version of the code (using "Osnabr%FCck") actually works, as it
retrieves data from accuweather.

The problem is, that the retrieved rdf data is invalid xml as it
contains one verbatim latin-1 char:

Error: not well-formed
Source File:
http://forecastfox.accuweather.com/adcbin/forecastfox/weather_data.asp?location=EUR|DE|GM009|Osnabr%FCck&metric=1&partner=forecastfox
Line: 40, Column: 190
Source Code:
<radurl>http://spotlight.accuweather.com/dyndoc/goto/spotlight/
adc_qxa3502/forecastfox.gif|www.accuweather.com/world-maps-
satellite.asp?partner=forecastfox&amp;zipcode=EUR|DE|GM009|Osnabr�ck|
&amp;myadc=0&amp;traveler=1&amp;level=regional&amp;type=IR&amp;site=eurm&amp;anim=STILL</
radurl>

so it seems the problem might not really a forcastfox bug but rather
an accuweather issue.

As this data seems to be based on some kind of partnership between
accuweather.com and forecastfox -- could someone with the fitting
contact pleas consider reporting this to them?

cheers
sascha

[Jon Stritar]

Thanks for the report. We'll get this fixed ASAP.

On Feb 1, 5:01 am, swilde <wi...@sha-bang.de> wrote:
> > I guess that the problem is that accuweather.com expects the umlaut
> > latin-1 encoded and forcast presumingly sends it utf-8 encoded...
>
> On a slightly closer look this guess was false.  Using the encoded
> version of the code (using "Osnabr%FCck") actually works, as it
> retrieves data from accuweather.
>
> The problem is, that the retrieved rdf data is invalid xml as it
> contains one verbatim latin-1 char:
>
> Error: not well-formed

> Source File:http://forecastfox.accuweather.com/adcbin/forecastfox/weather_data.as...DE|GM009|Osnabr%FCck&metric=1&partner=forecastfox

[Jon Stritar]

I figured out a way to work around the issue in the feed. Can you give this version a shot?

http://www.ensolis.com/forecastfox-0.9.10.2.xpi

We won't have real support for umlauts until the next major revision, where we start using Google Maps to lookup locations.

--Jon

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[Sascha Wilde]

Jon Stritar <jstr...@getforecastfox.com> wrote:
> I figured out a way to work around the issue in the feed. Can you give this
> version a shot?
>
> http://www.ensolis.com/forecastfox-0.9.10.2.xpi

I installed the upgrade and changed the code to "...|Osnabr%FCck" -- it
works. The correct forecast data is shown in the status bar and the
popups show "Osnabrück" correctly with the umlaut. Great!

Thanks for fixing it.

cheers
sascha
--
Sascha Wilde
"If you were young again, would you start writing TeX again or would
you use Microsoft Word, or another word processor?" - "I hope to die
before I *have* to use Microsoft Word." -- Prof. Donald E. Knuth