Rule LANG - The byte order mark (BOM) is detected? about jedchecker HOT 4 CLOSED

The problem is that BOM is a part of the following translation key, and as a result it is not processed by Joomla. For example, let one have the following INI file:

<BOM>COM_MYEXT="My Ext"
COM_MYEXT_SMTH="..."

(where <BOM> is the 3-byte UTF-8 BOM sequence) and the following PHP file:

<?php echo JText::_('COM_MYEXT');

In this case Joomla is not able to find translation for COM_MYEXT. To bypass this error, many translation files have a comment in the first line:

<BOM>; Translations for My Ext
COM_MYEXT="My Ext"
COM_MYEXT_SMTH="..."

and that's why the Language rule displays error message in the former case, and just a warning in the latter one.

from jedchecker.

Thanks for the clarification.

Is this documented somewhere? It would be great if we can include a link as a reference. I'm sure that people are going to start asking what is it.

from jedchecker.

https://docs.joomla.org/Language_Guidelines_for_3rd_Party_Extensions:

All .ini language files need to be saved as UTF-8 no BOM for the proper display of characters which are not in the ASCII range [a..z] and [A..Z].

https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Making_a_Language_Pack_for_Joomla:

ALL FILES MUST BE SAVED AS UTF8 NO BOM (for non-ascii glyphs as in accented letters, etc.)

But none explains why it's necessary.

from jedchecker.

Great. Case closed.

from jedchecker.