Maybe most Joomla extension developers can't imagin that if they use function substr to get first x characters of a string will cause problem to Chinese users especially when utf-8 encoding was used on the website.

I installed the CB Profile Gallery plugin version 1.0RC2+ today on www.uhiker.com . You can see it works well on upper part of the left column EXCEPT that the shortened image title in the footer is showing unreadable symbols in the end.

See attached screen shot.　The string of the alt text is the correct title, but the footer string is not.

There is a file called utf8.php that can solve this problem. A function named utf8_substr was defined in this file and was dedicated to replace function substr. Chinese translators had already packed this file in the Joomla Chinese version in <root>/includes directory.

I had attached the utf8.php file to let you know what is it.

I hope the author of CB Profile Gallery as well as other developers will consider to use function utf8_substr when whey want to get a shortened title or description from the longer original one.

Thanks.

I have not done more tests. But I am sure many extensions have similar problem with Chinese characters when they want to cut part of a string using function substr.

It seemed that Joomla 1.0.x developers never considered to add utf8.php into the core. So those extension developers can't find a solution.

But the translators in China had already realized this issue and added utf8.php to /includes folder.

I know few about Joomla 1.5. I only care about the result. If you can make it work properly, it is OK and I don't care what kind of solution you will take.

In fact, the most simple solution is let user difine the length of the image title showed as footer　(or header) ,if the specified length is longer than the real length of the title, then there will be no problem since substr function will cut the whole title.

Thank you all.