strange symbol in XML

[dzine]

Hi, caution....BRAND NEW NEWBIE HERE

I use Quark Docs to create XML using Atomic XPort PE. The Quark docs
are in the form of catalogs and I pull or export the content of the
catalogs out into XML format for web transistion. In some of the XML
I export through Atomic XPort PE, I get this funny symbol.... •

Needless to say, it is through the entire XML code and since I am new
to this process and don't know what this means, I don't know how to
get rid of it. Has anyone else come across this symbol before? I
tried doing a google search on it but it brought up nothing....can
anyone explain why I am getting it and what it means? I would
appreciate it.

Example of code:

<_06_BS_Heading apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">VHF Radio</
_06_BS_Heading>
<_06_BS_Small_Head apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">Compact Submersible
VHF • Ray48</_06_BS_Small_Head>
<_06_BS_text apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">• Fully submersible,
delivers reliable VHF performance in the harshest conditions</
_06_BS_text>
<_06_BS_text apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">• White housing</
_06_BS_text>
<_06_BS_text apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">• Easy-to-Read Backlit
LCD</_06_BS_text>
<_06_BS_text apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">• Quick access 16 PLUS
key</_06_BS_text>
<_06_BS_text apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">• Programmable scan •
Tri-watch</_06_BS_text>
<_06_BS_text apagenum = "1" pagenum = "1">• NOAA weather alert</
_06_BS_text>


Any direction would be appreciated....

 

[Joseph Kesselman]

I export through Atomic XPort PE, I get this funny symbol.... •

Data issue, not XML issue.

Remember, XML supports unicode, which means it can contain characters
outside the ASCII range. In most cases, the files will be UTF8, which
means high characters are encoded as a two- or three-byte sequence. If
you look at the numeric values of the bytes, and at the formal
definition of UTF8, you should be able to figure out what character
these actually represent. This is left as an Exercise for the Reader.

As to why it's there in the first place... well, you'll have to ask
whoever wrote the tool that's generating the XML, and/or whoever wrote
the data that tool is working on.

 

[Andy Dingley]

I get this funny symbol.... •

Note the extra leading character, an accented a
That's the usual giveaway that you're looking at UTF-8 data with a tool
that's expecting ISO-8859-* data. If you saw _single_ garbled
characters, it would probably be the other way round. If every character
looked OK but was prefixed by a square or diamond, then you'd be looking
at UTF-16 (probably from Windows).

Time to learn about the wonderful world of character encodings. Try
reading Jukka Korpela's website.

PS - just do everything in UTF-8 these days, not ISO-8859-*