Special characters in terms or termbase, index or language names causing failing links and cross references

Symptom 1

Opening termbases that contain special characters (like umlauts in German) is failing in SDL MultiTerm Online. You either see a blank page or the error java.lang.NullPointerException.

Symptom 2

Cross-references containing special characters may not be displayed in MultiTerm Online or clicking on such references is failing. You may see one of the following error messages:

• java.lang.NullPointerException

• Cross-reference could not be found: either it has been deleted or you do not have access permissions.

Add URI encoding information:

1. In your MultiTerm Online Server computer, browse to the configuration folder in your Tomcat installation directory. By default: C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\conf
2. Select the file server.xml and open it in a text/xml editor.
3. Search for the element Connector with the relevant SDL MultiTerm Online port (the standard port is 8080).
4. At the end of this element, add the following attribute: URIEncoding="UTF-8". You would have an element like the following:
   
      <connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
   connectionTimeout="20000"
   redirectPort="8443"
   URIEncoding="UTF-8" />
    
5. Save the server.xml file.
6. Restart the Apache Tomcat service.
7. Reconnect to SDL MultiTerm Online.

Apache Tomcat is not enabled to support Unicode links. The URI encoding in the server.xml configuration file is probably not correctly adapted; it does not yet support UTF-8.