Hi HTML gurus,

I understand that you would use HTML character entities for ä and €
but why on earth would anyone encode:

a colon: ":",
a semicolon ";",
or
a gramatical period "."
?

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...al_characters/

A colon should take only one byte in the HTML stream; why using 5?

lbrtchx@hotmail.com (Albretch) wrote:
[color=blue]
>Hi HTML gurus,
>
>I understand that you would use HTML character entities for ä and €
>but why on earth would anyone encode:
>
>a colon: ":",
>a semicolon ";",
>or
>a gramatical period "."
>?
>[/color]
You wouldn't. But every character has a corresponding code, whether or
not one would have any reason to use it. They're just giving you the
complete list for the codes 0-255 for reference.
[color=blue]
>http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...al_characters/[/color]


--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.

lbrtchx@hotmail.com (Albretch) wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi HTML gurus,[/color]

Speak, mortal.
[color=blue]
> I understand that you would use HTML character entities for ä
> and €[/color]

No, you don't. There are no "character entities". Just entity
references that may expand to character references, which designate
characters. And why would you use those entities? (There might be good
reasons, but most of people's reasons aren't.)
[color=blue]
> but why on earth would anyone encode:
>
> a colon: ":",
> a semicolon ";",
> or
> a gramatical period "."
> ?[/color]

Who knows? Why do you ask? You can use such references if you like.
Some people use them for trivial obfuscation. In some odd situation,
someone might have a problem of getting an HTML document through
something that may eat colons. But if you don't see any reason to use
those references, as most of don't most of the time, why would you need
to worry about them.
[color=blue]
> http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...al_characters/[/color]

It's not just unreliable information, it's plain wrong. Well, not all
of the information is wrong, but why would you use a reference that you
cannot rely on?
[color=blue]
> A colon should take only one byte in the HTML stream;[/color]

It may take any number of bytes, depending on the encoding.
[color=blue]
> why using 5?[/color]

One's ":" key is broken, perhaps.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Jukka K. Korpela quoted:
[color=blue][color=green]
> > http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...al_characters/[/color]
>
> It's not just unreliable information,[/color]

It's a _very_ strange garbled collection, isn't it? One has to wonder
what they hoped to gain by providing their own competing list against
one that's freely available from the people who defined HTML. And
without any kind of link to the authoritative sources.

(Sure, I know that you and I have lists, but we're not trying to
compete with the W3C).

It seems "Albretch" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:[color=blue]
>I understand that you would use HTML character entities for ä and €
>but why on earth would anyone encode:
>
>a colon: ":",
>a semicolon ";",
>or
>a gramatical period "."[/color]

Sentimental reasons?



:-)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

In article <Xns949776B3345DFjkorpelacstutfi@193.229.0.31>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
[color=blue]
> One's ":" key is broken, perhaps.[/color]

If your : key is broken you'll have a hard time typing the ; at the end
of those entities.

--
| Andrew Glasgow <amg39(at)cornell.edu> |
| And on the pedestal these words appear: / "My name is Ozymandias, |
| king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" -- Shelley |

Andrew Glasgow <amg39@cornell.edu> wrote:
[color=blue]
> If your : key is broken you'll have a hard time typing the ; at the
> end of those entities.[/color]

Well, I might live dangerously and omit it, relying on browsers not
requiring it (at least when SGML rules permit omission). Or I could use
Alt-059. (Since someone is going to ask: yeah, I could similar
technique to produce the colon too - but I forgot its code.)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Could you provide me with an autorative link?

It seems "Albretch" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:[color=blue]
>Could you provide me with an autorative link?[/color]

The authoritative list is at
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html
Jukka Korpela's is at
http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/HTM.../entities.html
Alan Wood's big list is at
http://www.alanwood.net/demos/ent4_frame.html
Alan Wood's selection of the characters you're most likely to want
is at
http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/demos/wgl4.html

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Andrew Glasgow <amg39@cornell.edu> writes:[color=blue]
> In article <Xns949776B3345DFjkorpelacstutfi@193.229.0.31>,
> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:[color=green]
> > One's ":" key is broken, perhaps.[/color]
>
> If your : key is broken you'll have a hard time typing the ; at the end
> of those entities.[/color]

Maybe it's just the shift keys that are broken?

--
Chris

On 24 Feb 2004 12:40:08 +0000, Chris Morris <c.i.morris@durham.ac.uk>
wrote:
[color=blue]
> Andrew Glasgow <amg39@cornell.edu> writes:[color=green]
>> In article <Xns949776B3345DFjkorpelacstutfi@193.229.0.31>,
>> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:[color=darkred]
>> > One's ":" key is broken, perhaps.[/color]
>>
>> If your : key is broken you'll have a hard time typing the ; at the end
>> of those entities.[/color]
>
> Maybe it's just the shift keys that are broken?
>[/color]


Then it's time for a new keyboard ;)

On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Alan J. Flavell wrote:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...al_characters/[/color][/color]
>
> It's a _very_ strange garbled collection, isn't it?[/color]

Well, it's called web_monkey_, isn't it?