• Registered: 2018-06-19
  • Posts: 10

Topic: HTML tags like ü not working in title or caption section

When I have an HTML tag like &uuml; (German Umlaut 'ü') in the <title>
or <comment> section in an <image> entry of the config.xml file, the
image gallery shows only a black screen and doesn't work.
Tags like &amp;, &quot; or &lt; work just fine there.

Is this a bug, and can it be fixed?

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,906

Re: HTML tags like &uuml; not working in title or caption section

If you are using JuiceboxBuilder-Pro to enter your image titles and captions, then you should be able to enter either ü (copy and paste the actual character) or &uuml; (on the 'Images' tab) and both should work fine. (I've just checked this myself and it works for me.)

If you are editing your gallery's 'config.xml' file manually in a plain text editor and are using &uuml;, be sure to use CDATA tags (<![CDATA[ ... ]]>) within your <title> or <caption> tags (incidentally, Juicebox does not support <comment> tags). CDATA tags are not required if you just use the ü  character directly (but it would be good practice to just always use CDATA tags anyway, as JuiceboxBuilder-Pro does).

For example, the following image titles should work fine.

<title><![CDATA[&uuml;]]></title>
<title><![CDATA[ü]]></title>
<title>ü</title>

... but the following image title will not work:

<title>&uuml;</title>

I hope this helps.

  • Registered: 2018-06-19
  • Posts: 10

Re: HTML tags like &uuml; not working in title or caption section

Thanks, with CDATA it works.

Just wondering why there is a difference between, e.g, &lt; and &uuml;.

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,906

Re: HTML tags like &uuml; not working in title or caption section

The only entities which are part of the XML standard are:

&apos; (')
&quot; (")
&amp; (&)
&lt; (<)
&gt; (>)

All other similar looking entities, such as &uuml;, are part of the HTML standard (rather than XML).

If you try using &uuml; (without CDATA tags) in a gallery's 'config.xml' file and open the XML file directly in a browser, you'll see that the HTML entity breaks the XML syntax with an error message such as "XML Parsing Error: undefined entity".
It's an XML issue rather than a Juicebox issue.
However, as long as you wrap your image titles (or captions) in CDATA tags, your HTML entities will be displayed (in your gallery's HTML web page) as expected.