The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #112265   Message #2373094
Posted By: JohnInKansas
24-Jun-08 - 06:26 AM
Thread Name: Tech: htmlesc.py: Mac script to escape text
Subject: RE: Tech: htmlesc.py: Mac script to escape text
Encode away, and be pleased with your posts, but what a viewer of your posts will see is mostly limited to the character glyphs in the font chosen as the default in the viewer's browser. The viewer chooses what characters will be shown, not the one who posts a bunch of gibberish.

Characters not included in the font used by someone reading your posts may have a more consistent representation of "illegibles" but your method will do nothing particularly helpful for most of us here.

It would seem much simpler just to choose a language (and keyboard, where needed) appropriate to the post, with a font containing the required glyphs, and simply add at the beginning of the post the name of a font (and language used, if necessary) that everyone can use to read your post.

Windows (recent versions) permits selecting more than 80 different languages, with or without choosing a keyboard layout appropriate to each. I was not aware that Macs lacked at least some ability to do the same, with sufficient languages to include the principal characters even if the choice is not as broad as for current Windows.

It does nothing particularly beneficial to post, correctly coded or otherwise, things that the majority of viewers will be unable to read without special effort; and extreme delusional pomposity to think that a post that requires the effort attending the "method" is so important that it will induce others to make the adjustments needed to read your "wisdom." (Most of us, I think, just ignore the frequent thunking errors in the cut-n-paste postings Amos so frequently puts up in "his thread," since we know it's "just a Mac thing.")

But try it out, and we'll see how it works if you wish.

John