Why can't I post in Japanese?

[ladycheru]

Hello. I'm a first-time member at Smack Jeeves. I'm trying to get my comic settled and everything squared away. I seem to have hit a snag, though. My comic is to be in Japanese, and therefore, I'd like my author comments to be in Japanese as well. (What's the point in posting them, if the regular readers can't read them?) However, whenever I try to make my comment in Japanese, the post seems to get swallowed up and turned into gibberish, or something like that. To exemplify what I mean, here is what I am intending to post, and have written into the comment box several times:

これは主人公の沢村湯っ子と彼女の犬ハナちゃん。この絵は5時間ぐらいかかりました。何となく、タイトルは一番難しかったです…　前に、ハナちゃんの毛皮は短かったのです。でも、僕は犬の解剖がわからないから、精度はあまり大切ではなくなるように、長くしました。でも、決めた色は同じです。この前、由紀子とハナちゃんの一緒の絵を描いたことはありません。かわいいでしょう？（^@^；；　）もうすぐ漫画のページを貼り始めます。今は五時半で、本当に疲れちゃいました。今、寝ます。

Here's what I keep getting back:

これは主人公の沢村由紀子と彼女の犬、ハナちゃん。この絵は5時間ぐらいかかりました。何となく�▲織ぅ肇襪楼貳崙颪靴�辰燭任后帖～阿法▲魯覆舛磴鵑量喩蕕話擦�辰燭里任后�任癲∨佑聾い硫鯔 兇�△泙蠅錣�蕕覆い�蕁∪�戮呂△泙蠡臉擇任呂覆�覆襪茲Δ法�垢�靴泙靴拭�任癲�茲瓩真Г 脇韻犬任后�海料亜⇒概�劼肇魯覆舛磴鵑醗貊錣粒┐鯢舛い燭海箸呂△蠅泙擦鵝��錣いい任靴腓Α ��@^;;　）もうすぐ漫画のページを貼り始めます。今は五時半で、本当に疲れちゃいました。今、 寝ます。
(http://watashinoinu.smackjeeves.com/ if it's necessary.)

I don't know why it's doing this. Is Japanese not supported by the website? It seems to work in other areas of my site, like the description and title and all. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Is there a way that I can possibly get around this?

Thank you!

[eishiya]

You are not doing anything wrong. It has to do with how the comments are sent along to the server when you post them, certain characters are reserved/special and get jumbled. Definitely fixable (SJ just has to properly escape the strings like they do for descriptions), and I hope that SJ fixes this.

[Admin]

I'm not exactly sure how to fix this. I tried something, which helped, but didn't entirely work. For now, this is a bug.

[eishiya]

For now, use this converter to convert what you want to type into HTML entities. I've tested it and the result works with SJ.
Notice that some of the characters will not be converted to HTML entities, but it'll all still work, just as some of the characters in your text stayed as they were.

Just Bookmark it and use it whenever you need to post a comment. It's an extra step, but I think it's worth the effort while the Admin figures out what's going on. I think it might have to do with the number of the character in Unicode, perhaps after a certain point they are no longer passed correctly... I might play with it to see if I can be of help.

[Admin]

This should actually be fixed now.

[eishiya]

For my own reference, what was the problem? Was it escaping, or something more involved?

Thanks for the fix! ...not that I foresee myself typing in Japanese on here, but you never know.

[Admin]

I'm still working on it, but I had to convert the database to utf8, then I had to actually convert everything in the database to utf8, I had to tell apache to always serve pages in utf8 mode, and then I had to fix a couple of functions that didn't work nicely with utf8.