This from Paul Berkowitz - dated 14/11/05 17.40:

> Don't paste Unicode text in messages to recipients (and list servers) that
> can't display Unicode.
 
I'll be sure to phone round the relevant parties and ask about their
unicode-readiness next time. (It was never this complicated when I dragged
text from ClarisWorks 3 into Cyberdog.)

> Entourage generally displays a yellow banner telling you that some characters
> you are sending require Unicode if that's the case.

I've seen that sort of thing on incoming messages, but never on outgoing,
and certainly not on this occasion.

> ... set your TextEdit document to Format/Plain text. Then, go to Save and see
> that it plans to Save in Plain text encoding: Western (MacRoman) ...

Hmm. The document in question demands plain text encoding UTF-16. All other
options in the encoding options menu are greyed out, apart from UTF-8 and
Chinese (GB 18030).

> You're surely not going to suggest that there ought to be some setting in
> Entourage that will munge text (replace Unicode characters by "?" or similar)
> without warning you?

Not at all. Warnings are good. "The text you just dragged/pasted into your
message window is unicode and may not be readable on some computers" (or
similar) would have been ideal. I'm active on a number of mailing lists, and
hate wasting eyeball time on corrupt and ill-formatted messages, especially
when they are from me.

> Have you any idea which characters you've pasted from TextEdit are triggering
> the UTF-8 encoding in Entourage?

Not really. There's an additional level of complexity here, in that the text
was copied into TextEdit from a web page before the problem chunk was
dragged into Entourage. If that has any relevance...

The original was an article published in The Economist, reporting on the
'Intelligent Design' trial in Dover/Harrisburg PA. The munged excerpt,
concerning the testimony of one of the witnesses against, was as follows:

***************
... John Haught, a theology professor who testified on September 30th that
life is like a cup of tea.

To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious ³levels of
understanding², Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to
boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water
molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one's spouse to switch on the
stove. Or that it is ³because I want a cup of tea.² None of these
explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution
is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a
universe in which life subsequently evolved.

It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular
movements by bringing in the ³I want tea² explanation. That, he argued, is
what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to
air their theory‹which he called ³appalling theology²‹in science classes.

***************

Things went badly wrong halfway through "Mr Haught" in para 2, line 2. I
have no idea why.

Regards,


Nick
pp Mr Tea

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