Quotes disappear; contractions convert to hanzi in RTF

[Antimoany]

i have two specific, seemingly connected issues, in openoffice writer.

when i am writing in a document, everything functions as expected.

however, if i save, close, and re-open that document, the following changes occur:

some contractions are converted into hanzi, but not the whole word - just the apostrophe and any characters after it

following the first such hanzi conversion, all quote marks are absent.

the contraction-hanzi conversion is consistent.

the 't of words such as "can't" and "didn't" becomes 稚 making didn稚 and can稚

the 'd of "I'd" becomes 壇 making I壇

the 's of words such as "that's" and "it's" becomes 痴 making that痴 and it痴
the above also happens with the posessive of at least one name: "Ronin's" becomes Ronin痴

similar conversions with other combinations of apostrophes and characters occur throughout. always, a given apostrophe-letter combination is converted into one particular hanzi character.

less consistently, spaces after (now absent) closing quote marks are sometimes converted into a question mark within a diamond: �

a lone apostrophe on the end of a word (such as to indicate a dropped consonant in dialogue, e.g. somethin' for nothin') is likewise converted into that above question mark.

i am saving the files in rtf format. this is necessary for compatibility reasons: i cannot use another format.

my OS language is cymraeg (UK), and openoffice's language is english (UK).

i have tried setting my OS language to english (UK), restarting, and creating and saving a new document. the issue remained.

i am using windows 7 (yes, really)

i did find one previous thread in which it seems the same issue is described, though i don't have microsoft word so i cannot confirm whether or not the characters appear in that. in wordpad, however, they do. unfortunately, in that thread, no solution or further diagnostic steps were offered; and i can find nothing relevant in the supplied search.

[floris v]

Can you upload a sample file - you can enter any nonsense text showing the problem.
To attach a file, click Attachments below the area where you enter your post (only in the full editor).

Edit: One possible cause may be using an ancient font that doesn't support Unicode. And you should, of course, save in .odt format. Saving in the old .doc or even .rtf format may give all kinds of problems.

[Antimoany]

thanks for the reply.

i certainly can upload a sample once i'm able to produce one. unfortunately, i had fixed the most recent problem file before i thought to report it here, so i can't simply upload that. this isn't a perfectly consistent issue: it happens sometimes, most of the time but not always. it often affects only half a document.

i'll do my best to deliberately re-create, and if i can't, i have no issues with uploading my actual fiction if it happens to that. i save it in fairly short chapters so file size shouldn't be too big of an issue.

i'll look into the fonts. i'm using comic sans MS, but openoffice's default font is set to something else. i'll try changing the default and see if that prevents this.

[RoryOF]

If one must work in .RTF format, then one might be better to try a sample file using WordPad, which should be available on a Windows 7 machine.

[Nicholas59]

It's a matter of fact that there are different character sets to choose from!

Did you mean ANSI standards?

Thanks for letting me know.

Regards

[Antimoany]

alright, i've tried repeatedly with no success to cause this to happen deliberately. i've typed nonsense at length, and even copied and pasted an entire wikipedia article (as unformatted plaintext) into a file. all saved as rtf, all set to the same font i use (again, it's comic sans so it shouldn't cause issues), none of which underwent this strange conversion.

however, it has happened again to the fiction file i was working on most recently. (attached)

i'm now aware that it seems this conversion will happen in stages:

first, to the whole file.

then, after i find-replace the converted characters back to the contractions they should be, and re-add the quote marks, it never happens to that section of the file again.

any further text edited will eventually undergo this hanzi conversion in its own time, and will likewise never be affected again after i've corrected it once via find-replace.

thus, in the attached file, you must scroll to the bottom to find the affected text.

i have made absolutely no edits to this file since opening it and discovering the hanzi conversion has taken place.

it may be of note that my entire pc has been restarted since i last opened the file; this restart may be the conversion trigger. it did not affect either of the test files i created in an attempt to manufacture that conversion.

opening the file in wordpad, i find the hanzi does appear just as it does in openoffice writer.

i had also saved the same file as .odt before closing down my pc; this file has not undergone the hanzi conversion. so while i could work in .odt if i must, i'd really prefer to find out why this is happening and stick to .rtf if possible.

when viewing the attatched file, readers should be aware that in the affected section of text at the bottom, one of the characters is naked and this is remarked upon. the scene is not sexual. in the unaffected sections of text higher up, self-harming behaviours are described.

thank you all for your time

[Nicholas59]

First of all thanks for your reply. As long as I remember (have been a wordpad user) rtf files has character portability ratio near to ZERO. Which means they only could be shared through wordpad applications.
Frankly, I was to use wordpad for FAX preparation (print on file).
Please accept my apologies.
Regards.
Nicholas