[PyQt] Weird QTextLabel Output

[matt-lists at comnet.net.nz]

On Saturday 24 April 2010 13:16:20 Glenn Linderman wrote:
> On 4/23/2010 6:02 PM, matt-lists at comnet.net.nz wrote:
> > I've got a small program that parses a web page and outputs a small
> > amount of text to a QTextLabel.  The problem is, that when displaying
> > numbers with spaces between them, the textLabel seems to add in strange
> > characters. Example:  http://everydaylht.com/example.png
> > 
> > The string should be "6 272 640 square inches".  This is how the string
> > looks when I parse the webpage.  If I print the string before it is
> > displayed, the terminal output is how it should be (ie. 6 272 640 square
> > inches).  However, in a QTextLabel, those weird A's get inserted.
> > 
> > The source file uses UTF-8 encoding.
> > 
> > Any suggestions what this might be, or how it might be fixed.
> > 
> > The relevant code is here:  http://pastebin.org/171738
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> > Matt
> 
> Weird As sound like an encoding problem... like passing UTF-8 to
> something that is expecting Latin-1.
> 
> I wonder, too, if your spaces are actually "hard spaces" (code 0xA0),
> which would be subject to such an encoding issue, even though all the
> visible text appears to be ASCII, and so thus not affected by weird
> encoding problems.
> 
> Fixing the encoding would be the right solution; converting hard spaces
> to regular spaces would be a workaround and might cause unintended line
> breaks (probably not a problem from your screen shot, but perhaps not a
> good general rule).
> 
> You don't mention if you are using Python 2 or 3, or what the encoding
> of the web page is... but maybe this will get you started down the right
> path.

Thanks for your help.  I thought it was an encoding problem too.  I'm using 
python 2.6.2.  

How do I find out the encoding of the web page?  Doesn't appear to be in the 
source.  The other problem I have, is that I'm not sure how to fix the 
encoding once I've worked it out what the encoding of the web page is.  I'm a 
bit of a newb, and am not sure exactly how this encoding thing works.

Cheers

Matt