Whcih Charset is Correct? And, How to Render a Macron?

[Ben Sharvy]

I don't reallly understand charsets, but I see that you are supposed
to declare one. I am putting a paper up in HTML. It uses some special
characters, like umlauts and diacriticals. The biggest problem I've
had with it is creating characters with lines over them (macrons), as
is done to indicate a long vowel sound, for example. There is no way
to do this using my word processor. Is there a way to do it in an HTML
document? Which charset should I declare in the <meta> tag?

[Andreas Prilop]

bs*****@mac.com (Ben Sharvy) wrote:

I don't reallly understand charsets,
Then I suggest reading http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/ .
I am putting a paper up in HTML. It uses some special
characters, like umlauts and diacriticals. The biggest problem I've
had with it is creating characters with lines over them (macrons), as
is done to indicate a long vowel sound, for example.
The vowels with macron are included the Baltic Rim character set,
ISO-8859-13 or Windows-1257.
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/baltic.html
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/baltic.html13
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/baltic.win
Nevertheless, it seems best for you to include all special characters
as &#number; expressions.
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...al2.html#latin
Both Netscape 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 can display them (if you
have fonts with the necessary glyphs, of course).
There is no way to do this using my word processor.
Meaning: You didn't find it. Which word processor and which operating
system do you use? For Macintosh, see
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...-european.html .
For MS Windows, see http://www.microsoft.com/typography/multilang/ .
Which charset should I declare in the <meta> tag?

None. Declare the encoding ("charset=UTF-8") in the HTTP header, see
http://www.w3.org/International/O-HTTP-charset.html and
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...t/ns-burp.html .

--
But thats what FP puts in to the page, so i asume thats correct
Harry H. Arends in microsoft.public.frontpage.client

[Andreas Prilop]

bs*****@mac.com (Ben Sharvy) wrote:

I don't reallly understand charsets,
Then I suggest reading http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/ .
I am putting a paper up in HTML. It uses some special
characters, like umlauts and diacriticals. The biggest problem I've
had with it is creating characters with lines over them (macrons), as
is done to indicate a long vowel sound, for example.
The vowels with macron are included in the Baltic Rim character set,
ISO-8859-13 or Windows-1257.
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/baltic.html
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/baltic.html13
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/baltic.win
Nevertheless, it seems best for you to include all special characters
as &#number; expressions.
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...al2.html#latin
Both Netscape 4.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 can display them (if you
have fonts with the necessary glyphs, of course).
There is no way to do this using my word processor.
Meaning: You didn't find it. Which word processor and which operating
system do you use? For Macintosh, see
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...-european.html .
For MS Windows, see http://www.microsoft.com/typography/multilang/ .
Which charset should I declare in the <meta> tag?

None. Declare the encoding ("charset=UTF-8") in the HTTP header, see
http://www.w3.org/International/O-HTTP-charset.html and
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...t/ns-burp.html .

--
But thats what FP puts in to the page, so i asume thats correct
Harry H. Arends in microsoft.public.frontpage.client

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Andreas Prilop wrote:

[amongst some good advice... but I /would/ say that, wouldn't I? ;-) ]

There is no way to do this using my word processor.

Meaning: You didn't find it. Which word processor and which operating
system do you use?

One might ask just what part a "word processor" is playing towards
making a well-engineered web page, though.

Good luck to the O.P anyway.

cheers

[Ben Sharvy]

Andreas Prilop <nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de> wrote in message news:<290920032001027517%nh******@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de>...

bs*****@mac.com (Ben Sharvy) wrote:

I don't reallly understand charsets,
Then I suggest reading http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/ .

I've read it. It didn't help.
The vowels with macron are included the Baltic Rim character set,
ISO-8859-13 or Windows-1257.
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/baltic.html
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/baltic.html13
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/baltic.win
Nevertheless, it seems best for you to include all special characters
as &#number; expressions.
I found the &#xxx; form. However, it doesn't display correctly on
Opera 5 (Mac). I've also discovered the CSS "overline" property, which
I might employ instead.

There is no way to do this using my word processor.

Meaning: You didn't find it

"There is no way to do this" does not mean "I didn't find it." It
means: there is no way to do this.
Which word processor and which operating
system do you use? For Macintosh, see
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...-european.html .
For MS Windows, see http://www.microsoft.com/typography/multilang/ .

Appleworks 6, MacOS 9.

Which charset should I declare in the <meta> tag?

None. Declare the encoding ("charset=UTF-8") in the HTTP header, see
http://www.w3.org/International/O-HTTP-charset.html and
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...t/ns-burp.html .

I don't know what an "HTTP" header is, and that page doesn't say. But,
I did look at the source of that page, and saw that it declares its
charset in a <meta> tag.

I looked at some other pages with the W3C's "Valid HTML 4.0" icon, and
they usually use:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html;
CHARSET=iso-8859-1">

Why do you say that's a mistake?

[Andreas Prilop]

On 30 Sep 2003, Ben Sharvy wrote:

Then I suggest reading http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/ .
I've read it. It didn't help.

You seem to be one of those persons who need to be guided by the hand
through everything.

Nevertheless, it seems best for you to include all special characters
as &#number; expressions.

I found the &#xxx; form. However, it doesn't display correctly on
Opera 5 (Mac).

Opera is infamous for its complete failure in internationalization.
It works only with West European Latin-1. I suggest Netscape 7 or
Mozilla on Mac OS 9. http://www.mozilla.org/ http://wamcom.org/
I've also discovered the CSS "overline" property, which
I might employ instead.
No, you must not. "A with macron" is a different character than "A"
and therefore cannot be represented by "A" with some style.
"There is no way to do this" does not mean "I didn't find it." It
means: there is no way to do this.
Appleworks 6, MacOS 9.
You need to install the Central European (CE) language kit:
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/#tech_info
For sources of additional CE fonts see
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...-european.html
Especially have a look at
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/cgi-...=european+html
I don't know what an "HTTP" header is,
As a webmaster/author, you need to know!
I did look at the source of that page, and saw that it declares its
charset in a <meta> tag.
I consider this a mistake/oversight. (Cc of this message to w3.org.)
I looked at some other pages with the W3C's "Valid HTML 4.0" icon
That doesn't mean anything.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Va...title:Untitled
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html;
CHARSET=iso-8859-1">
Why do you say that's a mistake?

Did you read
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...t/ns-burp.html ?

[Jukka K. Korpela]

bs*****@mac.com (Ben Sharvy) wrote:

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/ .
I've read it. It didn't help.

Read it again.
I found the &#xxx; form. However, it doesn't display correctly on
Opera 5 (Mac).
I'm usually against the idea that we should expect users to upgrade
their browsers, but surely we can regard Opera users as educated and
avantgardistic enough to update to something newer than that. At least
Opera 7 (Win) can display, say, Ā correctly an an uppercase A with
macron.

The problems are elsewhere, especially in Windows PC's that haven't got
"multilingual support" installed.
I've also discovered the CSS "overline" property,
which I might employ instead.
There's something to be said in favor of that idea, if the macrons are
just additional information working as length mark (e.g., as in Latin
grammars). They might - just might - be seen as "presentational".

But on the practical side anyway, the overline property means what it
says, a line over the text line. Thus, for most characters, it is way
too high, since most characters (calculated by frequency in normal
text, where lower case dominates) have their tops well below the top of
the text line. In a word, the overline flies well over letters.
Besides, if you overline, say, "A", the overline extends over the full
character width, as opposite to a macron, which is far shorter.
Appleworks 6, MacOS 9.
I have no idea of the properties of that software, but the real
question is whether it can work using standardized character encodings,
or at least convert the result to them, instead of using Mac's
proprietary encodings.
I don't know what an "HTTP" header is, and that page doesn't say.
But, I did look at the source of that page, and saw that it
declares its charset in a <meta> tag.

I looked at some other pages with the W3C's "Valid HTML 4.0" icon,
and they usually use:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html;
CHARSET=iso-8859-1">

Why do you say that's a mistake?

Well, you can put the "Valid HTML 4.0" icon on any page you like (the
W3C can't really prevent you), and validity is about formal grammar
_only_, so why would it affect the question how to specify the
character encoding properly? Besides, you are not really forbidden from
using the <meta> hack too; actually there are reasons in favor of using
it, too. The HTTP header is still the right way to specify the
encoding. Actually, the <meta> hack is just a plastic surrogate for it.

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

[Andreas Prilop]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jk******@cs.tut.fi> wrote:

There's something to be said in favor of that idea, if the macrons are
just additional information working as length mark (e.g., as in Latin
grammars). They might - just might - be seen as "presentational".

But only in Latin. In other languages, vowels with macron are characters
of their own - just as å ä ö.

[Alan Wood]

bs*****@mac.com (Ben Sharvy) wrote in message news:<d1**************************@posting.google. com>...

The vowels with macron are included the Baltic Rim character set,
ISO-8859-13 or Windows-1257.
Nevertheless, it seems best for you to include all special characters
as &#number; expressions.

I found the &#xxx; form. However, it doesn't display correctly on
Opera 5 (Mac). I've also discovered the CSS "overline" property, which
I might employ instead.

Opera 5 and below does not support Unicode on Mac or Windows.

Upgrade to Opera 6 for Mac, which does support Unicode.

--
Alan Wood
http://www.alanwood.net (Unicode, special characters, pesticide names)