Hi JuliÃn, We have issues in New Zealand with words in MÄori. In government we are required to use macrons to indicate a long vowel sound in MÄori words. The way we do it is to use UTF-8 as the document character set encoded in 7-bit ASCII. More info is available here: http://www.tpk.govt.nz/using/macron_paper/index.html
For older/non-utf-8 capable browsers there are a couple of server components that translates them back to the nearest ASCII character. (http://tinyurl.com/3vw5v) although I think these only work for the 5 vowels. They are GPL licenced so I guess they could be extended if you needed Joe On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:51:09 -0300, JuliÃn Landerreche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all, > my name is JuliÃn, i'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina. > I have read this great tutorial > (http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/) > recommended by WSG . The article makes things more clearly to me, but > not totally.. > > I feel this topic (choosing encoding and using special characters) is a > difficult one to be understood by newbies in standards (as I am) and not > newbies. > But I think itÂs a bit difficult for me, because I write in spanish, so > I usually need to use special characters like Ã, à or Ã. > > I have choose to use the ISO-8859-1 as charset for my webpages. > And I use to code special characters with html entity references. > Example: > à = é à = ú à = ñ etc. > > Well, let me ask a few questions: > > 1) Question: Is there a way to use special characters directly in the code? > > I would like to use directly à or à or Ã, and not to code them as html > entities references. > Hey, dont think I'm a lazy boy: just suppose this situation: if I have a > blog, I cannot expect that people (who post comments on my blog) knows > how to use html entities referencies. > Surely, they will prefer to type the special characters (Ã, Ã, Ã). > I wont like that if they use special characters in a post, then the post > cant correctly displayed (i.e. by showing those weird characters like > the black "?" or "ÃÂ" or "ÃÂ" ...) > > 2) I have seen a lot of webpages that directly use the special character > and dont code them as html entities. This pages are displayed correctly. > Question: Is this a good or bad practice (to use special characters in > code, instead of entities)? > > 3. In Google results, I found that those special characters arent always > correctly displayed. > Example: my webpage title in a two Google searchs result. > > i). "servicio tÃÂcnico especializado para mÃÂsicos" (buuuu!) > a. encoding: UTF-8 > b. charset: ISO-8859-1 > (from a page managed by Textpattern) > > ii). servicio tÃcnico especializado para mÃsicos > a. encoding: ISO-5-8859-1 > b. charset: ISO-8859-1 > (from a page managed by other script, or from hardcoded pages) > > Question: Is there a way to force or override the encoding (not the > charset) directly from the page code? > I think that my textpattern managed pages should have ISO-8850-1 encoding. > > (This is a question I also must do in textpattern forums, because I dont > know why pages managed by TXP have UTF-8 encoding, as there isnt any any > line in my whole site headers that shows "utf-8") > > 3. If I change to UTF-8... > a. wich are the advantages / disvantages? > b. I have test it in few of my pages -> all special characters (not > encoded as entities) are incorrectly displayed... yucks! > ------------------------------------------ > > Well, I think that's all, just to start. > I would like to read more resources about encoding and charset, and also > read experiences from the people of this list. > > Y tambiÃn me gustarÃa leer experiencias de gente que habla (y escribe > pÃginas) en espaÃol, Âhay alguien en la lista? > > Gracias a todos! Thank you! Excuse my poor english! > JuliÃn Landerreche > Buenos Aires, Argentina > www.midi-midi.com.ar (not finished yet) > ****************************************************** > The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ > > See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > for some hints on posting to the list & getting help > ****************************************************** > > -- Gmail invites - just ask nicely ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
