Is the website ok?

JRS: In article <Qd********************@speakeasy.net>, seen in
news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Shawn K. Quinn
<sk*****@xevious.kicks-ass.net> posted at Sat, 19 Jun 2004 13:48:07 :

About the only thing you've gotten right is to use valid HTML. However,
you're using what was considered state of the art for about 1998, and it's
now 2004. Most notably, the element is obsolete.

I use it frequently as in the last line of

Take a satellite mass m, planet mass M, density
D, planet radius R, orbit radius R (no
atmosphere...), period t, angular velocity
w, gravitational constant G.

in order to get Greeks (absence of simple Greeks seems an omission in
HTML). The method has the advantage that the selecting character, here
'w', is generally related in an evident manner to the desired one, here
'omega'.

How should they be done? With Unicode references such as € (which
I know is not Greek, and appears unrelated to its meaning)? If so, is
there a list of Greeks and common maths symbols available without
downloading the whole of Unicode?

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ??*@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.

Food expiry ambiguities: <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/date2k-3.htm#Food>

Jul 20 '05 #8

Mad Bad Rabbit

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Take a satellite mass m, planet mass M, density
D, planet radius R, orbit radius R (no
atmosphere...), period t, angular velocity
w, gravitational constant G.
Why not use the entity ω ?

(also, instead of , why not use <var> to emphasise variables ?)
How should they be done? With Unicode references such as €
(which I know is not Greek, and appears unrelated to its meaning)? If
so, is there a list of Greeks and common maths symbols available
without downloading the whole of Unicode?

Here's a list of entities for Greek letters and a few math symbols:

http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/ht...s/symbols.html

Otherwise, you'll have to look at:

http://www.unicode.org/charts/

and guess which chart the desired symbol is on ("let's see, is it
in Mathematical Operators ? Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A
or -B ? Supplemental Mathematical Operators ? Mathematical
Alphanumeric Symbols ? " etc.)

Jul 20 '05 #9

Steve Pugh

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

JRS: In article <Qd********************@speakeasy.net>, seen in
news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Shawn K. Quinn
<sk*****@xevious.kicks-ass.net> posted at Sat, 19 Jun 2004 13:48:07 :
About the only thing you've gotten right is to use valid HTML. However,
you're using what was considered state of the art for about 1998, and it's
now 2004. Most notably, the element is obsolete.
I use it frequently as in the last line of

Take a satellite mass m, planet mass M, density
D, planet radius R, orbit radius R (no
atmosphere...), period t, angular velocity
w, gravitational constant G.

You're relying on browser bugs. A good browser will realise that there
is no glyph for 'w' in the Symbol font and substitute a 'w' glyph from
another font.
in order to get Greeks (absence of simple Greeks seems an omission in
HTML).
Can you explain what you mean by this?
The content marked up by HTML can use any character encoding you like.
HTML itself defines a number of character entity references (in the
terminology used in the spec) including a set labelled
"Mathematical, Greek and Symbolic characters for HTML"
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html#h-24.3
The method has the advantage that the selecting character, here
'w', is generally related in an evident manner to the desired one, here
'omega'.
Do you mean that if the display is totally incapable of showing a
lowercase omega then showing a 'w' is the next best thing?
I'm not sure I agree.
How should they be done?
ω or ω or ω
Or include it directly and specify a character encoding for the page
that includes omega.
With Unicode references such as € (which
I know is not Greek, and appears unrelated to its meaning)?
Um, yes the Euro sign is not Greek, but how is it unrelated to its
meaning?
If so, is
there a list of Greeks and common maths symbols available without
downloading the whole of Unicode?

See above for starters. Then consult a resource that splits Unicode up
into the relevant collections.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <st***@pugh.net> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

Jul 20 '05 #10

Martin Honnen

Dr John Stockton wrote:

JRS: In article <Qd********************@speakeasy.net>, seen in
news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Shawn K. Quinn
<sk*****@xevious.kicks-ass.net> posted at Sat, 19 Jun 2004 13:48:07 :

Most notably, the element is obsolete.

I use it frequently as in the last line of

Take a satellite mass m, planet mass M, density
D, planet radius R, orbit radius R (no
atmosphere...), period t, angular velocity
w, gravitational constant G.

in order to get Greeks (absence of simple Greeks seems an omission in
HTML). The method has the advantage that the selecting character, here
'w', is generally related in an evident manner to the desired one, here
'omega'.

Well have you tried that in various browsers? IE6/Win will give you Ï‰,
Netscape 4 also does, but Mozilla displays w, and Opera 7 some symbol
looking more like some handwritten w than an Ï‰.
How should they be done? With Unicode references such as € (which
I know is not Greek, and appears unrelated to its meaning)?
Yes, use an Unicode character reference such as ω or simply
encode your HTML document as UTF-8 (as this post is encoded), that way I
get an omega (Ï‰) displayed in all named browsers.

If so, is
there a list of Greeks and common maths symbols available without
downloading the whole of Unicode?

http://www.unicode.org/charts/ lists the code charts, and Greek is found
at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0370.pdf
--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #11

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:

Shawn K. Quinn:
Most notably, the element is obsolete.

I use it frequently

You might say that! I'll resist the temptation to make the obvious
comment. SCNR.
w, gravitational constant G.
I'll set Andreas Prilop on you...

The Symbol font does not conain the "w" character, so what you are
asking for is nonsensical. If your browser displays what you wanted,
then it's compensating for your mistake: it's showing you what you
wanted - but it wasn't what you asked for. A browser which conformed
to RFC2070 or HTML4 would go and find some other font, one which -did-
contain the "w" character, and use that instead.
in order to get Greeks (absence of simple Greeks seems an omission in
HTML).
You really ought to learn HTML4, you know. Talk about "obsolete"!!
How should they be done? With Unicode references
Of course.
there a list of Greeks and common maths symbols available without
downloading the whole of Unicode?

Is there a published specification for HTML4? Sheesh.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html#h-24.3

There are still some browsers in use which didn't implement the HTML4
character entity names, so I'd have to recommend using the numeric
character references tabulated there instead; which is what you'd do
anyway for Unicode characters which aren't tabulated there - unless of
course you're composing actual Unicode characters (most practically in
utf-8). See also my page
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...t/checklist#s6 (and/or #s7)
for recommendations. Even Netscape 4.* versions understand those.

J.Korpela has a tutorial at http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/math/
Andreas also has test-cases at
http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nht...thematics.html

Jul 20 '05 #12

Neal wrote:

Unless you're using XML tools or are planning to use PHP, stick to HTML
4.01 Strict.

Why would using PHP be a reason to use XHTML? If anything, PHP makes
XHTML harder because its short_tags feature will attempt to parse the
XML prolog as PHP code when turned on.

Jul 20 '05 #13

Neal

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 21:42:32 -0400, Leif K-Brooks <eu*****@ecritters.biz>
wrote:

Neal wrote:
Unless you're using XML tools or are planning to use PHP, stick to HTML
4.01 Strict.

Why would using PHP be a reason to use XHTML? If anything, PHP makes
XHTML harder because its short_tags feature will attempt to parse the
XML prolog as PHP code when turned on.

Not quite what I was going towards. If you are not using XML tools to
build the page, then the only advantage of XHTML would be in serving it as
application/xml+xhtml to take advantage of the error-parsing many browsers
perform on an XML file. However, as IE currently does not support that
MIME type, you need to find a way to serve the file as text/html to IE
while serving it "properly" to other browsers. The only way I've found is
to use PHP.

So, if you don't plan to use PHP, there's no way I know of to serve it as
application/xml+xhtml to some browsers and as text/html to others.

BTW, if you include the prolog, it knocks IE into quirks mode, so most
authors don't bother with the prolog anyway. I'm under the impression that
it's not required anyhow - though I could be mistaken here.

Jul 20 '05 #14

Neal wrote:

So, if you don't plan to use PHP, there's no way I know of to serve it
as application/xml+xhtml to some browsers and as text/html to others.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/content-negotiation.html

Jul 20 '05 #15

Neal

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 22:17:48 -0400, Leif K-Brooks <eu*****@ecritters.biz>
wrote:

Neal wrote:
So, if you don't plan to use PHP, there's no way I know of to serve it
as application/xml+xhtml to some browsers and as text/html to others.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/content-negotiation.html

I'm basically familiar with browsers telling the server what MIMEs they
accept. What I'm not clear on from this document is how I configure Apache
to send either text/html or application/xml+xhtml to a browser for the
same file based on its accept request.

Jul 20 '05 #16

Neal wrote:

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 22:17:48 -0400, Leif K-Brooks
<eu*****@ecritters.biz> wrote:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/content-negotiation.html

I'm basically familiar with browsers telling the server what MIMEs they
accept. What I'm not clear on from this document is how I configure
Apache to send either text/html or application/xml+xhtml to a browser
for the same file based on its accept request.

That would involve lying to the browser, which isn't a very good idea. A
better option would be to have one HTML 4 file and one XHTML file and
choose which the browser gets based on its Accept header.

If you have your heart set on lying to the browser, you can use some
mod_rewrite trickery. See
<http://www.greytower.net/en/archive/articles/xhtmlcontent.html>.

Jul 20 '05 #17

Neal

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:37:00 -0400, Leif K-Brooks <eu*****@ecritters.biz>
wrote:

Neal wrote:
On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 22:17:48 -0400, Leif K-Brooks
<eu*****@ecritters.biz> wrote:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/content-negotiation.html

I'm basically familiar with browsers telling the server what MIMEs they
accept. What I'm not clear on from this document is how I configure
Apache to send either text/html or application/xml+xhtml to a browser
for the same file based on its accept request.

That would involve lying to the browser, which isn't a very good idea. A
better option would be to have one HTML 4 file and one XHTML file and
choose which the browser gets based on its Accept header.

If you have your heart set on lying to the browser, you can use some
mod_rewrite trickery. See
<http://www.greytower.net/en/archive/articles/xhtmlcontent.html>.

Well, lying to an inanimate object keeps my conscience clear, but writing
two separate documents/websites makes me a little reluctant...

I use this precise snippet in my experimentations. I have yet to implement
this in an actual live site.

<?
if(stristr($HTTP_SERVER_VARS["HTTP_ACCEPT"],"application/xhtml+xml")){
header("Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8");
echo('<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">');
} else {
header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");
echo ('<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">');
}
?>

(My server uses an old PHP, as you can tell. $_SERVER would be preferred
here, obviously.)

It works like a charm. No problems detected. I'd appreciate a heads up on
what problems this could create.

Jul 20 '05 #18

Neal wrote:

[Calling XHTML text/html] works like a charm. No problems detected.
I'd appreciate a heads up on what problems this could create.

A browser which doesn't support XHTML or guzzle tag soup won't be able
to use your site. IIRC, w3m falls in to this category, but don't quote
me on that.

Jul 20 '05 #19

Neal

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 01:29:03 -0400, Leif K-Brooks <eu*****@ecritters.biz>
wrote:

Neal wrote:
[Calling XHTML text/html] works like a charm. No problems detected.
I'd appreciate a heads up on what problems this could create.

A browser which doesn't support XHTML or guzzle tag soup won't be able
to use your site. IIRC, w3m falls in to this category, but don't quote
me on that.

Not familiar with w3m, where is it from? I've tested this on NN4.01
successfully.

Jul 20 '05 #20

Chris Morris

Leif K-Brooks <eu*****@ecritters.biz> writes:

Neal wrote:
[Calling XHTML text/html] works like a charm. No problems detected.
I'd appreciate a heads up on what problems this could create.

A browser which doesn't support XHTML or guzzle tag soup won't be able
to use your site. IIRC, w3m falls in to this category, but don't quote
me on that.

No, w3m (Neal: http://w3m.sourceforge.net/ - unlike NN4 it's still
being developed) would cope fine with that.

--
Chris

Jul 20 '05 #21

Chris Morris

Neal <ne*****@yahoo.com> writes:

I use this precise snippet in my experimentations. I have yet to
implement this in an actual live site.

<?
if(stristr($HTTP_SERVER_VARS["HTTP_ACCEPT"],"application/xhtml+xml")){
header("Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8");
echo('<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">');
} else {
header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");
echo ('<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">');
}
?>

It works like a charm. No problems detected. I'd appreciate a heads up
on what problems this could create.

Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml;q=0.1
Would be sent application/xhtml+xml rather than the preferred text/html

Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml;q=0
Would be sent application/xhtml+xml despite saying 'never send it'.

Accept: application/*
Unusual but possible. Would be incorrectly sent text/html.

Accept: */*
Would be sent text/html - not necessarily incorrect.

--
Chris

Jul 20 '05 #22

JRS: In article <t6********************@texas.net>, seen in news:comp.i
nfosystems.www.authoring.html, Mad Bad Rabbit <ma**********@yahoo.com>
posted at Sun, 20 Jun 2004 10:29:19 :

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Take a satellite mass m, planet mass M, density
D, planet radius R, orbit radius R (no
atmosphere...), period t, angular velocity
w, gravitational constant G.
Why not use the entity ω ?

Does not work on my system, which has MSIE4. That is an absolute
requirement, since otherwise a wrong but plausible character might be
shown elsewhere (I press an incorrect key quite frequently).

I cannot recall whether I've viewed such a page on a later browser, but
I'm pretty sure I've not seen any such page failing to give the desired
characters; not do I recall any report of a problem. If some systems do
not handle it as I'd wish, then there is a section of the potential
audience that I cannot currently satisfy - just as much as a page
written by you containing ω would not entirely satisfy me.

Actually, IIRC, I don't have any list showing such a form for Greeks;
but given that example the rest should be easy to guess.
(also, instead of , why not use <var> to emphasise variables ?)
Mark-up is expected to produce italic. Those are not really
variables in the programmer's sense, but algebraic symbols, for which
italic is proper. Mark-up <var> happens to give me italic at present,
but for programmers' variables I would want what <tt> gives me.

Otherwise, you'll have to look at:

http://www.unicode.org/charts/
...

Thanks.
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links;
some Astro stuff via astro.htm, gravity0.htm; quotes.htm; pascal.htm; &c, &c.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.

Jul 20 '05 #23

JRS: In article <96********************************@4ax.com>, seen in
news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Steve Pugh <st***@pugh.net>
posted at Sun, 20 Jun 2004 16:34:56 :

Dr John Stockton <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

I use it frequently as in the last line of w, gravitational constant G. in order to get Greeks (absence of simple Greeks seems an omission in
HTML).

Can you explain what you mean by this?

I should possibly have put "original HTML", and stressed "simple".

TB-L originated the Web in a technical institution, where Greeks should
be greatly needed for names of particles, the SI micro prefix, and
general maths. ISTM that it would have been easy enough, for example,
to use some keyboard character, possibly \, as an escape for the next
character indicating that it meant a corresponding Greek or Maths
symbol. That would be simple to use. It could be extended for the
better-known Continental languages by saying that if the character after
\ is a punctuation character, the meaning is that a corresponding accent
is to be intelligently applied to the following letter; e.g. \"a =
ä and even \-h = Planck's symbol. It would not preclude adding any
of the existing wider-range extensions.

( I've used a word processor in which ! was an escape character
for italic; perfectly convenient (Greeks were probably
impractical in those days))

The form that I use for omega is undesirably long; in &#number; the
number is not obviously related to the character.

The method has the advantage that the selecting character, here
'w', is generally related in an evident manner to the desired one, here
'omega'.

Do you mean that if the display is totally incapable of showing a
lowercase omega then showing a 'w' is the next best thing?
I'm not sure I agree.

In the context in which I tend to use it, that would be acceptable. But
it is not what I meant. I meant that the author can easily relate the
double-you of the page source within a Symbol context to the intended
Greek meaning omega.

How should they be done?

ω or ω or ω

I see in MSIE4 ? or ? or ω where ? represents a near-
square.

With Unicode references such as € (which
I know is not Greek, and appears unrelated to its meaning)?

Um, yes the Euro sign is not Greek, but how is it unrelated to its
meaning?

There is no obvious connection between either the concept Euro or the
epsilon-like shape and the number 8364. There would be an obvious
connection with a notation such as \=C or \$, or E.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ??*@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
Dates - miscdate.htm Year 2000 - date2000.htm Critical Dates - critdate.htm
Euro computing - eurocash.htm UK Y2k mini-FAQ: y2k_mfaq.txt Don't Mail News

Jul 20 '05 #24

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:

Why not use the entity ω ?
Does not work on my system, which has MSIE4.

&#number; references for Greek have been working since at least
MSIE3.03, maybe earlier. They were certainly working for me back in
the days of Win95, once I'd got some decent fonts. (Well, they were
working fine in Alis Tango browser on Win/3.1, but that's a bit of a
special case).

If you aren't seeing it, then something else is wrong. (You've got
castrated fonts installed, probably).
That is an absolute requirement,

Illogical. Browsers of that vintage in general did not guarantee to
support a character repertoire greater than iso-8859-1. Anything else
would be either icing on the cake (if in conformance with published
specifications), or "relying on a bug" - which is what it seems you're
determined to do.

You really can be stubbornly determined to make a sow's ear out of a
silk purse, sometimes.

Jul 20 '05 #25

Uncle Pirate

Ganesh J. Acharya wrote:

I now think that I am also a newbie for HTML too. I am thinking of
using XHTML as it is the current standard. But is that a good decision
because I have to soon build a team here rather working the things on
my own. So, I have to keep many things in mind. I am learning to walk
forward keep a enterprise in mind.

I asked on alt.html about HTML vs. XHTML. The gist of the responses
seemed to be stick with HTML unless XHTML is needed for content
management or other XML related issues. I think I'm going to stick with
HTML 4.01 strict on the school's new site.

--
Stan McCann "Uncle Pirate"
Webmaster/Computer Center Manager, NMSU at Alamogordo
Cooordinator, Tularosa Basin Chapter, ABATE of NM AMA#758681
'94 1500 Vulcan (now wrecked) :( http://surecann.com/Dcp_2068c.jpg
A zest for living must include a willingness to die. - R.A. Heinlein

Jul 20 '05 #26

JRS: In article <t6********************@texas.net>, seen in news:comp.i
nfosystems.www.authoring.html, Mad Bad Rabbit <ma**********@yahoo.com>
posted at Sun, 20 Jun 2004 10:29:19 :

Here's a list of entities for Greek letters and a few math symbols:

http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/ht...s/symbols.html

Exactly the sort of answer I was after. HTML, not PDF, which is quite
unnecessary for the purpose.

Only four of them work for me; three are of no real use to me, and one
was already known (fnof hellip trade; bull).

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 IE 4 ©
<URL:http://jibbering.com/faq/> JL / RC : FAQ for news:comp.lang.javascript
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/js-index.htm> jscr maths, dates, sources.
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> TP/BP/Delphi/jscr/&c, FAQ items, links.

Jul 20 '05 #27

JRS: In article <Pi*******************************@ppepc56.ph.gla. ac.uk

, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> posted at Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:06:59 :On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:
>Why not use the entity ω ?
Does not work on my system, which has MSIE4.

&#number; references for Greek have been working since at least
MSIE3.03, maybe earlier.

(1) But ω is not of the form &#number;.
(2) Some numbers, yes. All assigned numbers, not for me.
If you aren't seeing it, then something else is wrong. (You've got
castrated fonts installed, probably).
The installation is as was supplied on behalf of Microsoft.

That is an absolute requirement,

Please do not quote without sufficient context.

A sufficient quote would have been :
Does not work on my system, which has MSIE4. That is an
absolute requirement, since otherwise a wrong but plausible
character might be shown elsewhere ...
Illogical. Browsers of that vintage in general did not guarantee to
support a character repertoire greater than iso-8859-1. Anything else
would be either icing on the cake (if in conformance with published
specifications), or "relying on a bug" - which is what it seems you're
determined to do.

Irrelevant. As an author, I insist on being able to read what I am
authoring. It is then reasonably certain that the great majority of
others see either what I would wish, or the glyph of indeterminacy; that
they will not see a plausible, but incorrect, character.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Delphi 3 Turnpike 4 ©
<URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> TP/BP/Delphi/&c., FAQqy topics & links;
<URL:http://www.bancoems.com/CompLangPascalDelphiMisc-MiniFAQ.htm> clpdmFAQ;
<URL:http://www.borland.com/newsgroups/guide.html> news:borland.* Guidelines

Jul 20 '05 #28

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:

JRS: In article <Pi*******************************@ppepc56.ph.gla. ac.uk
, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> posted at Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:06:59 :
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:
>Why not use the entity ω ?

Does not work on my system, which has MSIE4.

&#number; references for Greek have been working since at least
MSIE3.03, maybe earlier.

(1) But ω is not of the form &#number;.

Congratulations, you noticed. That's why I tried to recommend (unless
you're composing utf-8 in the first place) to use &#number; in
preference to &name; , if such &name; entities were defined in HTML4.
More details on my web pages, if you finally get around to looking.
But you're too busy finding excuses for not following the specs.
(2) Some numbers, yes. All assigned numbers, not for me.
If you aren't seeing it, then something else is wrong. (You've got
castrated fonts installed, probably).
The installation is as was supplied on behalf of Microsoft.

Microsoft subsequently recommended a free font upgrade, if you're
talking about the OS that I think you are.
As an author, I insist on being able to read what I am authoring.
You insist, it seems, on stumbling along with an obsolete system and
refusing all pointers to available upgrades. I should have given up
sooner, shouldn't I?
that they will not see a plausible, but incorrect, character.

If you persist with your Symbol font bogosity, then users of
HTML4-conforming browsers certainly -will- see what you consider to be
the incorrect character (e.g they will see "q" where you -intended-
theta). With all your consideration for users of obsolete and
defective software, don't you care in the least about the users of
specification-conforming browsers?

EOT for me.

--
I'm afraid you have fallen into a well-known trap of understanding
what is going on here. -Phil Hazel on exim-users

Jul 20 '05 #29

Brian

Leif K-Brooks wrote:

Neal wrote:
if you don't plan to use PHP, there's no way I know of to serve it
as application/xml+xhtml to some browsers and as text/html to others.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/content-negotiation.html

That's great in principle, but how do you contend with MSIE/Win's
accept headers?

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #30

Brian

Neal wrote:

I use this precise snippet in my experimentations. I have yet to
implement this in an actual live site.
You probably shouldn't.
<?
if(stristr($HTTP_SERVER_VARS["HTTP_ACCEPT"],"application/xhtml+xml")){
header("Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8");
echo('<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">');
} else {
header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");
echo ('<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">');
}
?>

It works like a charm. No problems detected. I'd appreciate a heads up
on what problems this could create.

Have you figured out how to process if-modified-since and
if-none-match headers? How to send 304 Not modified if the situation
calls for it? What do you hope to gain from xhtml+xml?

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #31

Brian

Ganesh J. Acharya wrote:

I now think that I am also a newbie for HTML too. I am thinking of
using XHTML as it is the current standard.

If you don't understand the issues, then use html 4.01/strict. That
is also the current stan^H^H^H^H recommendation from the w3c.

Choosing xhtml because it's the latest and, you think, greatest, is
rather silly if you don't understand what it is what its advantages
and disadvatages are.

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #32

Neal

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 01:27:28 GMT, Brian
<us*****@julietremblay.com.invalid> wrote:

Neal wrote:
I use this precise snippet in my experimentations. I have yet to
implement this in an actual live site.
You probably shouldn't.
...
Have you figured out how to process if-modified-since and if-none-match
headers? How to send 304 Not modified if the situation calls for it?

See, you've totally lost me. Why would those pose an actual problem?
What do you hope to gain from xhtml+xml?

At this time, nothing. In the future, it may be useful depending on where
I go with a particular site. No harm working out the bugs in advance,
though.

Jul 20 '05 #33

Ganesh J. Acharya

Shree Ganesha

I have filled up some content. Please Kindly check the website

http://ashapurafoods.com

There are some things still a bit incomplete...

I have to propose another website for a product named

--------------->geared pump.

Kindly advice me how does one go about this product. What are the
mandatory thing that are must in a website. A customer comes to me
thinking that he has to make some online business with their website.
I some how have to learn to stand right at this..

Best Regards

Ganesh J. Acharya

Jul 20 '05 #34

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:

If you aren't seeing it, then something else is wrong. (You've got
castrated fonts installed, probably).
The installation is as was supplied on behalf of Microsoft.

Then complain to Microsoft that they hold back/hide software
from you although you paid for it! I suggest to visit
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/multilang/>
Does not work on my system, which has MSIE4. That is an
absolute requirement, since otherwise a wrong but plausible
character might be shown elsewhere ...
Internet Explorer 4 on Windows 95 *can* display
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/greek.html7>
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/mathematics.html>
properly.
Irrelevant. As an author, I insist on being able to read what I am
authoring. It is then reasonably certain that the great majority of
others see either what I would wish, or the glyph of indeterminacy; that
they will not see a plausible, but incorrect, character.

That's all fine. But to my own experience, even Netscape 3.0 can display
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/greek.html7>
correctly. Netscape 4.0 will display
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/mathematics.html>
correctly. There's really no need to write
w
because this breaks in modern browsers, i.e. Netscape 7 and Mozilla.

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

Jul 20 '05 #35

On 22 Jun 2004, Ganesh J. Acharya wrote:

I have filled up some content. Please Kindly check the website
http://ashapurafoods.com

Please refer to
<http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/>
<http://www.bipm.org/en/si/>
<news:misc.metric-system>
for correct unit symbols:

mg = milligram
g = gram
kg = kilogram

These symbols are written _without_ period. The abbreviation
"gm." is grossly wrong!

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

Jul 20 '05 #36

Brian

Neal wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 01:27:28 GMT, Brian
<us*****@julietremblay.com.invalid> wrote:
Neal wrote:
I use this precise snippet in my experimentations. I have yet to
implement this in an actual live site.
Have you figured out how to process if-modified-since and
if-none-match headers? How to send 304 Not modified if the situation
calls for it?

See, you've totally lost me.

(ahem)
<scold>
Neal, you're a regular, you have no excuse! Surely you've come
across a thread mentioning this page:

http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/

A.Flavell refers people to it on a regular basis.
</scold>
Why would those pose an actual problem?

You must not realize how much cacheing goes on when you surf the
web, and how much the web relies on caching.

If a page does not change very often, you want a client that has
already seen it to use what's in its cache (or what's in a proxy
cache. Ideally, you send explicit freshness information, so that the
client need not check back with you at all. It just servers what's
in the cache instead. This depends on the headers you send --
expires and cache-control -- and on the client configuration.

Second best thing: You may not know how long a document will remain
fresh. But you do know when it was last modified. Have the server
send a Last-modified header informing the client, and optionally, an
Etag. Depending on the config of the client/proxy, it may guess at
freshness based on the last-modified, or it may check with your
server. In the latter case, it sends an "if-modified-since" header
with its get request. In plain English, the client says "only send
me a copy of the resource if my copy is out of date; if my copy is
still current, just tell me, and I'll use that instead."

With static pages, the server takes care of this for you. But with
dynamic pages, the server software has no way of knowing when it was
last modified. So it falls to you to provide this functionality. It
can be done -- I've done it with PHP/MySQL -- but it is not trivial.

This will be complicated by the xhtml/html issue, and IE/Win's
screwy accept header. Are you *sure* you want to do this for real? ;-)

What do you hope to gain from xhtml+xml?

At this time, nothing. In the future, it may be useful depending on
where I go with a particular site. No harm working out the bugs in
advance, though.

If this is just a test, then you're right. No harm. But to try to
put up a live page intended for the general public, then I'd avoid
it. The cost of xhtml is rather high for no appreciable benefit.

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #37

Brian

Dear group:
It appears that my new news client (Thunderbird) is not wrapping my
lines. It shows them as wrapped in the compose window, but appear on
the news server with no line breaks. If so, then please accept my
apologies. I'm currently trying to figure out why Thunderbird is not
behaving like Mozilla Mail/News, on which it's based.

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #38

Neal

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 14:41:08 GMT, Brian
<us*****@julietremblay.com.invalid> wrote:

Neal wrote:
See, you've totally lost me.
(ahem)
<scold>
Neal, you're a regular, you have no excuse! Surely you've come across a
thread mentioning this page:

http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/

A.Flavell refers people to it on a regular basis.
</scold>

I am ashamed.

Why would those pose an actual problem?

You must not realize how much cacheing goes on when you surf the web,
and how much the web relies on caching.

If a page does not change very often, you want a client that has already
seen it to use what's in its cache (or what's in a proxy cache. Ideally,
you send explicit freshness information, so that the client need not
check back with you at all. It just servers what's in the cache instead.
This depends on the headers you send -- expires and cache-control -- and
on the client configuration.

Having read through and bookmarked the page (which I had not seen
actually, so thanks very much!) I see now the problem, which I hadn't
considered. I could add Expires and Cache-Control headers to make it check
the server and not cache. Obviously people who have a lot more computers
to go through to get to the site would be slowed down, but in the case of
a site with largely local interest, it would probably be OK, hmm?
Second best thing: You may not know how long a document will remain
fresh. But you do know when it was last modified. Have the server send a
Last-modified header informing the client, and optionally, an Etag.
Depending on the config of the client/proxy, it may guess at freshness
based on the last-modified, or it may check with your server. In the
latter case, it sends an "if-modified-since" header with its get
request. In plain English, the client says "only send me a copy of the
resource if my copy is out of date; if my copy is still current, just
tell me, and I'll use that instead."

With static pages, the server takes care of this for you. But with
dynamic pages, the server software has no way of knowing when it was
last modified. So it falls to you to provide this functionality. It can
be done -- I've done it with PHP/MySQL -- but it is not trivial.

This will be complicated by the xhtml/html issue, and IE/Win's screwy
accept header. Are you *sure* you want to do this for real? ;-)

Well, this is why I do these things as experiments ;)

What do you hope to gain from xhtml+xml?

At this time, nothing. In the future, it may be useful depending on
where I go with a particular site. No harm working out the bugs in
advance, though.

If this is just a test, then you're right. No harm. But to try to put up
a live page intended for the general public, then I'd avoid it. The cost
of xhtml is rather high for no appreciable benefit.

Jul 20 '05 #39

JRS: In article <Pi*******************************@ppepc56.ph.gla. ac.uk

, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> posted at Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:01:56 :On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:
JRS: In article <Pi*******************************@ppepc56.ph.gla. ac.uk
>, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell <fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> posted at Mon, 21 Jun 2004 21:06:59 :
>On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:
>
>> >Why not use the entity ω ?
>>
>> Does not work on my system, which has MSIE4.
>
>&#number; references for Greek have been working since at least
>MSIE3.03, maybe earlier.

(1) But ω is not of the form &#number;.

Congratulations, you noticed.

Indeed; but the point is that the existence of numeric references cannot
provide a more powerful reason than the _actual_ reason which I stated.
Sarcasm needs to be deployed more subtly than that.

You insist, it seems, on stumbling along with an obsolete system and
refusing all pointers to available upgrades. I should have given up
sooner, shouldn't I?
Obviously. And if you can believe that an author should publish what he
cannot readily read, then your judgement is self-discredited.

If you persist with your Symbol font bogosity, then users of
HTML4-conforming browsers certainly -will- see what you consider to be
the incorrect character (e.g they will see "q" where you -intended-
theta). With all your consideration for users of obsolete and
defective software, don't you care in the least about the users of
specification-conforming browsers?

I receive a reasonable amount of feedback about my pages - of all sorts,
down to the trivial. No actual reader has yet reported that the
material does not show in a satisfactory manner. Therefore, I assert
that the set of those dissatisfied with what they see is unworthy of my
consideration.

It should be remembered that, while many of those here are professional
Web authors, or, what is worse^H^H^H^H^more, professional Web
standards/software authors, some are not. I'm prepared to spend time in
serving normal people, but not to spend money in serving professionals.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk DOS 3.3, 6.20; Win98. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms & links.
PAS EXE TXT ZIP via <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/00index.htm>
My DOS <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/batfiles.htm> - also batprogs.htm.

Jul 20 '05 #40

Brian

Neal wrote:

Brian wrote:
http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/
I could add Expires and Cache-Control headers to make it check the
server and not cache.

! This is going in the wrong direction. Expires and Cache-Control
headers should be used to *encourage* cacheing. Why do you want to
prevent caching? It's rare that a web resource needs to have "no
caching" instructions associated with it. You should only do so if the
resource changes every second. If possible, you should send explicit
freshness info so that clients can use cached copies without checking
with the server, *and* you should send 304 for conditional get requests
if clients check with you anyways.
Obviously people who have a lot more computers to go through to get
to the site would be slowed down,
Indeed. Pity the poot dialup users.
but in the case of a site with largely local interest, it would
probably be OK, hmm?

I don't see how local interest changes caching requirements, except that
perhaps there might be less proxy caches involved. Even that is a
dubious assertion; how can you be sure that local visitors use a local isp?

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #41

Brian

Dr John Stockton wrote:

And if you can believe that an author should publish what he cannot
readily read, then your judgement is self-discredited.
Do authors create pages only for their own consumption? Or are other
readers involved?
It should be remembered that, while many of those here are
professional Web authors, or, what is worse^H^H^H^H^more,
professional Web standards/software authors, some are not.
I think that was intended as an insult, but somehow I don't feel insulted.
I'm prepared to spend time in serving normal people, but not to spend
money in serving professionals.

As if the two were mutually incompatible!

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

Jul 20 '05 #42

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Andreas Prilop wrote:

There's really no need to write
w
because this breaks in modern browsers, i.e. Netscape 7 and Mozilla.

Unfortunately, the Mozilla folks went and deliberately broke their
standards conformance in "quirks mode", precisely in order to pander
to the likes of Dr.John; so unless John accidentally writes a web page
which switches Moz into standards-conforming mode (and I'd never
suspect him of doing something like that!), he wouldn't see the
problem for himself, even if he could be arsed to try it.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33127

--
I'm afraid you have fallen into a well-known trap of understanding
what is going on here. -Phil Hazel on exim-users

Jul 20 '05 #43

Harlan Messinger

"Dr John Stockton" <sp**@merlyn.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:vf**************@merlyn.demon.co.uk...

And if you can believe that an author should publish what he
cannot readily read, then your judgement is self-discredited.

Helen Keller did.

Jul 20 '05 #44

Jan Roland Eriksson

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 21:15:19 +0100, "Alan J. Flavell"
<fl*****@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Andreas Prilop wrote:
There's really no need to write
w
because this breaks in modern browsers, i.e. Netscape 7 and Mozilla.

Unfortunately, the Mozilla folks went and deliberately broke their
standards conformance in "quirks mode", precisely in order to pander
to the likes of Dr.John; so unless John accidentally writes a web page
which switches Moz into standards-conforming mode (and I'd never
suspect him of doing something like that!), he wouldn't see the
problem for himself...

At a random check of source at Dr.John's pile of pages I find this;

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

I wonder what kind of mystery action that a "doctype switcher" will
take when it finds that kind of contradiction in the doc prologue.

Further I can find this little gem;

 <hr TITLE="lightrule">

Hmm... a TITLE attribute value on a horizontal ruler? Ok it creates a
pretty useless "tooltip" if nothing else.

But the most obvious illustration comes from this;

...and the escape velocity is
Ö2
times the orbital velocity.

I'm pretty sure that Dr.John did not intend for me to see the letter
'O' with two dots above it (the Swedish character 'Ö') but that is
what I get in my straight default installation of Mozilla 1.6

OTOH my MSIE6 shows the square root character which is probably what
Dr.John intended.

The full section I'm looking at comes out as follows in Mozilla;

Surface orbital velocity satisfies v2/r = g, so v = Ö(gr).
Thus the orbital energy is 0.5mv2 = 0.5mgr ; and the escape
velocity is Ö2 times the orbital velocity. For uniform
acceleration at g, v2 = 2gs, so s = r/2 ; to attain orbital
velocity with a horizontal acceleration of g (and an initial
overall "weight" corresponding to g×Ö2) takes half a radian.
Escape velocity takes a full radian.

as cut and pasted directly from my browser window.

There is nothing wrong with my ability to read and understand basic
math formulas but this example would keep me puzzled for quite some
time :-)

--
Rex

Jul 20 '05 #45

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:

At a random check of source at Dr.John's pile of pages I find this;

...and the escape velocity is
Ö2
times the orbital velocity.

I'm pretty sure that Dr.John did not intend for me to see the letter
'O' with two dots above it
It's even worse on platforms that do not use ISO-8859-1 as native
encoding but, say, MacRoman or cp850 or cp500. The entity Ö
is displayed with character x85 on the Macintosh because char x85
is 'Ö' in MacRoman. But the Symbol font has *no* character x85.
<http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/ROMAN.TXT>
<http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/SYMBOL.TXT>

This is really stupid, "Dr" John Stockton.
(the Swedish character 'Ö')
I regard it as German character. :-)
OTOH my MSIE6 shows the square root character which is probably what
Dr.John intended.

But only if you set the option "Allow documents to use other fonts".
(I don't know the exact wording in Internet Explorer.) _My_ settings
are "Don't allow documents to use other fonts".

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

Jul 20 '05 #46

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:

I receive a reasonable amount of feedback about my pages - of all sorts,
down to the trivial. No actual reader has yet reported that the
material does not show in a satisfactory manner.
Sir, I complain that your construction
Ö
doesn't show anything with Macintosh browsers.
Therefore, I assert
that the set of those dissatisfied with what they see is unworthy of my
consideration.

Few people will realize that there is something wrong with _your_
authoring and fewer still will write to you. One reason certainly
is that one has to find out your e-mail address from a graphics
file <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/graphics/e-m-adrs.gif>
and retype it in one's e-mail program. Why bother?

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

Jul 20 '05 #47

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Dr John Stockton wrote:

JRS: In article <Pi*******************************@ppepc56.ph.gla. ac.uk
, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Alan J. Flavell You insist, it seems, on stumbling along with an obsolete system and
refusing all pointers to available upgrades. I should have given up
sooner, shouldn't I?

Obviously. And if you can believe that an author should publish what he
cannot readily read, then your judgement is self-discredited.

Straw man arguments too. Well, well.

Jul 20 '05 #48

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004, Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:

At a random check of source at Dr.John's pile of pages I find this;

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
Oh yes, I think I just found the very page. No surprises that it
fails HTML validation; but I -was- surprised that John has actually
managed to put Mozilla into standards-compliance mode. I must admit I
hadn't even thought of trying it.
...and the escape velocity is
Ö2
times the orbital velocity.

I'm pretty sure that Dr.John did not intend for me to see the letter
'O' with two dots above it
But that's precisely what he *asked* for, and that's what Mozilla
does.

Lynx, of course, also.

Andreas's point about the Mac platform was also very relevant, except
that I suppose Macs are only used by specialists, and - judging from
his answers - John doesn't want to be read by specialists.
There is nothing wrong with my ability to read and understand basic
math formulas but this example would keep me puzzled for quite some
time :-)

Well, there you go. The ultimate in HTML compatibility: "works" only
on broken browsers. There's a lot of them about, and he's told us
that they're the only ones he cares about. So I guess he and we
should just retire under our respective bridges and let the world get
on with life...

Jul 20 '05 #49