BS: HTML & Ampersand Code testing

Subject: BS: testing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 12:37 PM

München

that should produce a u with two dots over it.

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 12:37 PM

Ta da! my first successful ampersand escape code!

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 12:52 PM

Zehr schön!

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 05:30 PM

Danke.

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 05:48 PM

Hasn't your WP got the equivalent of what the Mac calls a Character Palette, which produces all such manifestations at the touch of a mouse: ~~ à ç ö ê è é ü ~~ as well as, e.g. ♘☑©⅛☛☝♠❤☹〠☤✆〠❦ɷ☏✂✈ ⁈ ⁉ ❣❢

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 06:06 PM

I see all but the 2nd & 3rd from last in that list.

these were done with the java program Jon compiled. ۝ ۞ ⅜

There's still a long way to go to integrate all this so almost anyone can see & post almost any characters.

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 06:11 PM

(those 3 characters were with Arial font enabled.... if I switch to Lucida Sans unicode, there are many others available)

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 06:26 PM

It's called Character Map in Windows, and displays all the characters in any selected font.

It's a "System Accessory" so you can select any character, copy it and paste into any compatible program. Alternatively you can select a list of individual characters, copy the selection box, and paste them into your other program, and then cut-n-paste them to the appropriate places. The only minor annoyance is that the pasted chars don't often match the font size you're using in the document so you may have to resize.

When you click or hover on a char in Character Map, side boxes also show you the Decimal character value if it's an ASCII char so that you can use the Alt-NumPad method of entry, and will show you the Unicode HEX value if you tell it to show Unicode. Either the decimal or hex values can be used to code the correct chars into an html post, but in Windows the chars pasted into a post generally look okay at least to other Windows users, as long as you stick to Latin based fonts.

Windows Word also has numerous "shortcut" key combinations that allow you to enter valid characters - especially for alternate languages. The advantage of the shortcuts is that once you know them for the chars you use you can enter them "at typing speed" without having to go to another source.

Another handy feature is that in Word you can put you cursor next to an unknown character and hit Alt-X to toggle it to display the Unicode Hex value. This usually works even if the character displays as an "unknown" if it's due to your using a font that lacks that char.

I'd presume that Mac Word probably works the same but with cuter names for the buttons.

John

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 06:35 PM

Bill D.

I see all of MtheGM's characters, in IE with "Western European (Windows)" encoding and Times New Roman for a font.

Several of the chars appear to be from the Unicode Hex 26xx series, but apparently the Mac toy omits the 60% of those in that region that DON'T WORK here, if a test post in one of the practice threads is any indication.

John

Subject: RE: BS: testing
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 08:29 PM

Ā, ā, Ē, ē, Ī, ī, Ō, ō, Ū, ū

Subject: RE: BS: HTML & Ampersand Code testing
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Feb 11 - 10:57 PM

I'm sure the font is relevant, John... this browser is set to Palatino linotype, just because I like it. I oughta check several others.

Subject: RE: BS: HTML & Ampersand Code testing
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 03:01 AM

It took me forever to learn ampersand codes. I was in need of new glasses, and my eyesight was too blurry to see the semicolon at the end of the code...

Subject: RE: BS: HTML & Ampersand Code testing
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Feb 11 - 05:20 AM

& = escape character to tell the interpreter that what follows is code

# = modifier to say that the code is a number

x or X = modifier to say that the number is a hexadecimal one, omitted for decimal character numbers.

nnnn = the number

; = code ending mark to say the code is finished

&#nnnn; for decimal codes and &#xhhhh; for hex numbered codes     ☃ = ☃

Recent Windows versions should all include the "Arial Unicode MS" font, that contains about 39,000 characters (IIRC?). It should contain all the characters from "alphabetic" languages, but two-thirds(?) (or more) of the Unicode characters are for "pictographic" languages, mostly "oriental." Even with just alpha based languages, the font file is about 22.5 MB, so using it can slow down your computer. People who didn't get it with their version of Windows should be able to download it from Microsoft, but it's in one of the fringe "group" areas - "Internationalization" or something like that.

Times New Roman is the next largest "alpha based" font on my machine, and it's only 809 KB. It's an "extended" font that contains virtually all of the chars anyone is going to have any reason to put up at mudcat. I've been using it for quite a while, and have never seen a broken char on mudcat due to not having the char in the font.

The Arial (non-Unicode) font with WinXP and later was also, I think, an "extended font" so it should be a good one if you want a sans-serif one.

Windows (IE) installations recently have defaulted to a font in IE that supposedly was invented "just for the web." It includes most of the European chars, but deliberately omits all but the most common variant ones in order to keep the file size as small as possible. I recall being annoyed that it kept "resetting" itself for a while, but don't recall what it was called. It's a good one for general browsing, but not so good if you encounter significant numbers of non-English sites.

Even the much maligned "curly quotes" come through in text if they're coded correctly, although as MUST BE REMEMBERED they don't work in code (or URLS).

(The different rules for URLS are a separate subject, but they are significanlty different than the general html rules, and it appears that some of our people have been confusing the two in recent posts.)

UNICODE deliberately leaves large "areas" of numbers unassigned so that users can assign "local definitions" to them. Unfortunately Mac expecially appears to use local code pages that put "curlies" and some other (mostly punctuation) marks in an unassigned area and seemingly doesn't convert them to Unicode as well as Windows. Windows can post broken code characters, but for the most part they're not in "language and spelling" but are mostly in "marks" that don't affect meaning.

(NO COMPETENT TYPIST should ever use the Office "Insert Symbol" because these will nearly all be "broken" in html, and will earn you curses and incantations from your typographer and prepress setup people.)

John