RE: [WSG] Less than and greater than in UTF-8 encoded HTML
and and should always be written as entities because they will interfere with the syntax otherwise. (And sometimes ). On the other hand, utf-8 should allow you to use actual characters for every other character you are likely to want to include in your content, and doing so is recommended. See http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-escapes Note that lt; gt; and amp; will always be recognised in HTML and XML, but there may be occasions when other entities are not recognised, so you may want to consider using NCRs (numeric character references) instead. This is explained in the article above. Btw, the latest incarnation of my Unicode code converter http://rishida.net/scripts/uniview/conversion allows you to do 2 useful things in this regard: [1] paste some HTML into the top right field and in the top left field it will strip ncrs/entities apart fromand from the HTML text [2] paste some HTML into the top left field and in the top right field it will convert all and characters to entities - very useful for preparing examples of code in HTML. RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/International/ http://rishida.net/blog/ http://rishida.net/ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Simon Cockayne Sent: 14 November 2007 14:42 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Less than and greater than in UTF-8 encoded HTML Hi, How should I code less than and greater than signs in UTF-8 encoded HTML? I.e. I want them to appear on the web page as follows: ... The quick brown fox said 3 is less than 4, then he wrote 3 4. ... file:///C:/Program%20Files/Apache%20Software%20Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/PHPDEVZONE/shield/www.shield.on.ca.htm Cheers, Simon *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
Ah, that makes a lot more sense, Mike. Thanks.
It's annoying that it doesn't work so well in Opera, but I'd rather give the
problem to Opera users than IE users. This also seems a much more sensible
approach. I guess I should contact Opera and see if we can't get this
'fixed'.
So now my code looks like this:
.container label.interaction {
font-size: 130%;
color: #e70;
background-color: #ff;
border: 0;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
cursor: pointer;
}
form action=/International/2007/06/surveyform.php method=post
plabel class=interactioninput src=/International/icons/mailus.gif
alt= type=image Envoyez-nous un commentaire/label/p
input type=hidden name=docname value=$self /
input type=hidden name=referer value=$referer /
input type=hidden name=lang value=$clang /
/form
I'm wondering whether to add a title attribute telling Opera users to click
the icon, or whether they'll figure it out.
Thanks all for the help.
RI
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike at
Green-Beast.com
Sent: 21 June 2007 05:18
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
Thierry Koblentz wrote:
I came up with this:
http://www.tjkdesign.com/lab/button.asp
But it requires to move the text out of the button :(
I'm sort of just catching the end of this, but are you guys
talking about something like what I did on my daughter's blog [1]?
[1] http://sarahcherim.com/ (look at the Contribution Cow
on the sidebar)
I didn't use button (not sure if that's was the point or just
making clickable image/text form posting).
Cheers.
Mike Cherim
PS. Just a little disclaimer, looking at the image/text form
on that site I realized I should have used a legend instead
of the heading. It's not clickable in Opera either, by the
way -- just the image.
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[WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
I put together a box that expands to accommodate larger text in translation, but I forgot that text on a submit button doesn't wrap :O Original: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset.en.php#endlinks (see the box to the right) First problematic translation: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset.fr.php#endlinks I want the text Send us a comment to look like a link, but trigger a POST, so I put the text in a submit button and styled it. Unfortunately the longer translations won't wrap that way. form action=/International/2007/06/surveyform.php method=post pinput class=interaction value=Send us a comment type=submit/p input name=docname value=/International/questions/qa-css-charset.en.php type=hidden input name=referer value=http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset.fr.php; type=hidden input name=lang value=en type=hidden /form Does anyone know a better way to do this? I was hoping to avoid using JavaScript, if possible. Cheers, RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
Aha! Yes, that seems to do the job, if I set an appropriate width. Many thanks, Chris. What a great list this is. RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Taylor Sent: 20 June 2007 16:11 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links? Have you tried the button element? As far as I know that can be styled pretty much how you want. I used it on this page: http://www.searchandgo.com/weather/United-States/New-York-City / - the New York City exchange rates text on the left is a button. I may have missed the point of your question, of course. It happens regularly with me. Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Ishida Sent: 20 June 2007 15:52 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links? I put together a box that expands to accommodate larger text in translation, but I forgot that text on a submit button doesn't wrap :O Original: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset.en.ph p#endlinks (see the box to the right) First problematic translation: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset.fr.ph p#endlinks I want the text Send us a comment to look like a link, but trigger a POST, so I put the text in a submit button and styled it. Unfortunately the longer translations won't wrap that way. form action=/International/2007/06/surveyform.php method=post pinput class=interaction value=Send us a comment type=submit/p input name=docname value=/International/questions/qa-css-charset.en.php type=hidden input name=referer value=http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charse t.fr.php type=hidden input name=lang value=en type=hidden /form Does anyone know a better way to do this? I was hoping to avoid using JavaScript, if possible. Cheers, RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
Hmm. On the other hand.. It works fine in Firefox, Opera, Safari (Win), but not in IE :(( Grr. RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Ishida Sent: 20 June 2007 17:08 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links? Aha! Yes, that seems to do the job, if I set an appropriate width. Many thanks, Chris. What a great list this is. RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Taylor Sent: 20 June 2007 16:11 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links? Have you tried the button element? As far as I know that can be styled pretty much how you want. I used it on this page: http://www.searchandgo.com/weather/United-States/New-York-City / - the New York City exchange rates text on the left is a button. I may have missed the point of your question, of course. It happens regularly with me. Chris -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Ishida Sent: 20 June 2007 15:52 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links? I put together a box that expands to accommodate larger text in translation, but I forgot that text on a submit button doesn't wrap :O Original: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset.en.ph p#endlinks (see the box to the right) First problematic translation: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset.fr.ph p#endlinks I want the text Send us a comment to look like a link, but trigger a POST, so I put the text in a submit button and styled it. Unfortunately the longer translations won't wrap that way. form action=/International/2007/06/surveyform.php method=post pinput class=interaction value=Send us a comment type=submit/p input name=docname value=/International/questions/qa-css-charset.en.php type=hidden input name=referer value=http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charse t.fr.php type=hidden input name=lang value=en type=hidden /form Does anyone know a better way to do this? I was hoping to avoid using JavaScript, if possible. Cheers, RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
Thanks, Nick.
I did have the attribute set already, but it doesn't seem to help. Here is
my code now:
form action=/International/2007/06/surveyform.php method=post
pbutton class=interaction type=submitimg
src=/International/icons/mailus.gif alt= / Envianos un
comentario/button/p
input type=hidden name=docname value=$self /
input type=hidden name=referer value=$referer /
input type=hidden name=lang value=$clang /
/form
And my CSS:
.container button.interaction {
font-size: 130%;
color: #e70;
background-color: #ff;
border: 0;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
text-align: left; /* for IE */
cursor: pointer;
max-width: 100%;
}
IE still truncates the French, rather than wrapping it. I will probably
have to resort to using br /, but that's far from ideal for boxes with
some flex to them or when users may have different fonts etc.
RI
Richard Ishida
Internationalization Lead
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
http://www.w3.org/International/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nick Fitzsimons
Sent: 20 June 2007 18:17
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
On 20 Jun 2007, at 17:37:59, Richard Ishida wrote:
Hmm. On the other hand..
It works fine in Firefox, Opera, Safari (Win), but not in IE :((
Grr.
Have you specified the type attribute with value submit?
Although the spec states that this is the default, IE
defaults to the value button instead. Specifying the
attribute should get it working in IE.
OT: really enjoyed your presentation at @media in London the
other week :-)
HTH,
Nick.
--
Nick Fitzsimons
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/
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RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links?
Thanks, Thierry. Yes, I'm beginning to conclude that that's the only thing that I can do, too. It doesn't really solve the problem though, when you have flexibility wrt box size or fonts, accessibility zooming, etc. Oh well... Glad you enjoyed the talk. Cheers, RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thierry Koblentz Sent: 20 June 2007 18:46 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] Triggering POSTs with links? On Behalf Of Richard Ishida Hmm. On the other hand.. It works fine in Firefox, Opera, Safari (Win), but not in IE :(( Grr. AFAIK, the only thing that works in IE is to use a br / within the string... OT: really enjoyed your presentation at @media in San Francisco the other week :-) --- Regards, Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Web page translations
Tom, Here's what I think you need in your code: ?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8? !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd; html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; lang=XX xml:lang=XX head meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=UTF-8 / where XX is fr for French, es for Spanish, and pt for Portuguese. (Unless this is Canadian French fr-CA and Brazilian Portuguese pt-BR.) Note that I added both lang and xml:lang attributes, since I assume you are serving this as HTML. xml:lang is not recognised by the HTML parser (but is by an XML parser). You can also add meta http-equiv=Content-Language content=XX / though I don't know of any user agent that makes use of that information at the moment. For more information see: Tutorial: Declaring Language in XHTML and HTML http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/language-decl/ and Language tags in HTML and XML http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/ I think you should also have links between each language version in a prominent place on each page that has parallel content in a translated page. Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jan Brasna Sent: 06 February 2006 16:58 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Web page translations What do I need to change? In your case - nothing. You're already done. In my case, when I use ... ?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8? !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd; html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=cs head meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=UTF-8 / meta http-equiv=Content-Language content=cs / ... I need to change the xml:lang and the last meta (both cs) to the appropriate content (eg. de when converting to German). -- Jan Brasna :: www.alphanumeric.cz | www.janbrasna.com | www.wdnews.net ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Websites in Different Languages
See the note I just sent to Tom Livingston entitled '[WSG] Web page translations' RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of White Ash Sent: 03 February 2006 17:00 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Websites in Different Languages Hello! I've designed a website, and we're going to be making an almost identical Japanese version. I'm not sure what is involved ~ is it as easy as including the following at the top of the document: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd; html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml xml:lang=ja lang=ja meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=Shift_JIS Thanks for any and all guidance! White Ash ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Article: MIME and Content Negotiation
Hello Karl, Interesting series of articles. For this one, there's quite a lot to be said, and fitting it all in in a way the novice can understand in progressive steps it is a bit of a challenge. Just a few thoughts [1] For text/html it is best to define the character encoding in the HTTP header rather than hard code meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=UTF-8 into your pages or templates. I think the question of character encoding declarations is skimped a little. At the W3C we looked at best practises for character encoding declarations. You can find our conclusions at http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/en/all.html#Slide0240 Note that HTTP isn't always the best way to go. There are pros and cons, depending on the usage and the developer. [2] The main thrust of this article seems to be how to use application/text+xml to allow for forward compatability. I wondered whether it might be better to split the article into more general introductions to content negotiation, xml declaration, etc. then discuss use of application/xml+xhtml, and in another article bring everything together with an example PHP application. Just an idea. [3] The XML Declaration is required for character sets other than UTF-8 and UTF-16 s/character sets/character encodings/ For example, utf-8 and utf-16 are both exactly the same character set, though different encodings (see http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/en/slides/Slide0060.html ) [4] You will need to ensure that all other character references are numeric in nature. It would be good to explain the reason you say this. hth RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Karl Dawson Sent: 16 January 2006 09:21 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Article: MIME and Content Negotiation Hi, Apologies in advance if you see this cross-posted: From the Top is a series of articles that I am publishing to concisely explain how and why to construct a high quality, web-standards compliant head section for a web page. The second article, just released, examines MIME and Content Negotiation. http://www.thatstandardsguy.co.uk/2006/01/16/content-negotiation/ Comments, especially error-spotting and general bravo very welcome, it all helps with my work position. Regards, -- Karl Dawson Crusader for Web Standards and Accessibility http://www.thatstandardsguy.co.uk -- Accessites Team Member - http://www.accessites.org/ -- The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect. Tim Berners-Lee - W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Bi-directional text
Hi Mordechai, Andrew already offered you some good advice. I absolutely agree that you shouldn't use graphics for the Hebrew text. Most major browsers support bidi text quite well these days (though I can't vouch for user agents on mobile devices). Since it seems you will generally be dealing with Hebrew text embedded inline in English text, I would suggest you read What you need to know about the bidi algorithm and inline markup http://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/ to understand the ins and outs of this. I can't think of anything you need to add to the head element in this case. Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mordechai Peller Sent: 17 November 2005 11:06 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Bi-directional text I need to mark-up a document (XHTML) written in English, but which includes some Hebrew words. I'm trying to decide the following: 1. How should the words be marked-up: span, dfn, or just leave them in the flow? 2. Is the bdo element needed, or just the dir attribute? 3. How should the transliteration and translation be included: title attribute or following in the flow? 4. How's the browser support for bidi? 5. What should be included in the head element? Thanks ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Character encoding mismatch
Thanks, Susan, for pointing to that stuff. Paul, you if you're using Apache you may also find this particularly useful: Setting 'charset' information in .htaccess http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-htaccess-charset That would allow you to continue using utf-8, which I think is a good move. Also, you may find the following useful wrt using character references: Using character entities and NCRs http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-escapes Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida Internationalization Lead W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ http://www.w3.org/International/ http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Susanne Jäger Sent: 10 November 2005 12:21 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Character encoding mismatch Paul Collins wrote, On 10.11.2005 12:44: I thought this was the correct way to add special characters for XHTML, but what I am reading now seems to contradict this. This is the part of standards where I get a bit confused. Does anyone have any advice or know of some good articles where they explain this in simple terms?? Have a look at the material in W3Cs internationalization-Section W3C I18N Topic Index http://www.w3.org/International/resource-index.html#charset I like the Tutorial: Character sets encodings in XHTML, HTML and CSS http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/# choosing At least they try to explain the rather complicated stuff for everyone. ;-) HTH Susanne -- http://sujag.de - Webentwicklung und -beratung [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lottumstr. 22, 10119 Berlin, Tel: 030 - 440 483 47 ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
[WSG] New W3C article: Changing (X)HTML page encoding to UTF-8
The W3C GEO Working Group has published the FAQ-based article, which I think may be of use to people on this list: Changing (X)HTML page encoding to UTF-8 http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-changing-encoding by Richard Ishida, W3C Aimed at newcomers to internationalization who want to change the encoding of their (X)HTML pages, this article provides an answer to the question: How do I change the encoding of my (X)HTML pages to UTF-8? Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] IE problem with ?xml version=1.0 encoding=iso-8859-1?
Duncan, As the others have said, you can omit the declaration if you want to avoid affecting standards mode in IE (see http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/ ) The key thing is to check that your file is encoded in the encoding you want, ie. do you want it to be encoded in iso-8859-1 or in utf-8? I'm just about to release a new article that might help here: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-changing-encoding If you want more information about this: The 'Document Character Set' is actually utf-8 (see http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-doc-charset ) You should at least check that you do declare the encoding in a meta tag, and that it is correct. For more info see http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/ HTH, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Duncan Stigwood Sent: 26 August 2005 13:32 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] IE problem with ?xml version=1.0 encoding=iso-8859-1? HELP! Tidy puts in ?xml version=1.0 encoding=iso-8859-1? which I think I understand is the Document Character Set, i.e. V. important. However having it in my document makes IE screw up all absolute positioning!! What am I doing wrong? Thanks guys ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
[WSG] Internationalization Articles Published
The W3C Internationalization GEO (Guidelines, Education Outreach) Working Group publishes information to help people understand and use international aspects of W3C technologies. These articles are likely to be useful to WSG folks. In the past month, the group published - Using Character Entities and NCRs http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-escapes.html - Using select to Link to Localized Content http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-navigation-select - Ruby Markup and Styling http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/ruby/ There is also a regular stream of updates[1] and translations[2]. For details and I18n news and RSS feeds[3], visit the Internationalization home page[4]. [1] http://www.w3.org/International/#qa [2] http://www.w3.org/International/#newtrans [3] http://www.w3.org/International/log/description [4] http://www.w3.org/International/ RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Encoding, charsets and entities...
Hi Roberto, I think this may answer many of your questions: http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/ RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roberto Gorjão Sent: 15 June 2005 10:27 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Encoding, charsets and entities... Hi, I’m trying to understand the pros and cons of different charset encodings and I would like to know what your experience tells you about this subject, notably: * Unicode encoding (UTF-8) seems to be more efficient than ISO charsets (iso-8859-1): It covers all the languages in a single encoding; it’s universal (or at least getting to be); it’s compatible with ASCII; some argue even that it’s quicker… Are there any drawbacks? Does the fact that the characters Unicode may have different sizes affect string calculus with JavaScript? String lengths, character position retrieval and so on? * Where does the use of UTF leaves us regarding to entities? Some say that we don’t have to worry anymore with coding currency symbols or accented letters… Is that true? (I really did never pay much attention to this matter and get used to see Dreamweaver code automatically all accented letters that I insert in the design tab (that’s almost the only reason why I use the design tab nowadays…) but I think I would convert myself definitely to a much cheaper software if even this functionality turns out to be useless). And what about quotation marks and less than and greater than signs? They seem to validate all right when inserted directly on the code without any kind of special entities coding. * Which is the best way to declare it? I’ve noticed that webstandardsgroup.org page declares it only in the XML “prolog” and does not use any meta tag to do it as does for instance the Unicode.org page. Thank you. Roberto ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Character encoding
Hello Joshua, all, Here is the advice from the W3C Internationalization Activity: http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/en/all.html#Slide0420 (See in particular the subsection When to use escapes.) In summary, use characters rather than escapes when you can, except for a handful of syntax-significant characters, and for ambiguous or invisible characters. (Note that we also suggest using hex numbers rather than decimal, since most charts or people dealing with character code points refer to them that way - but that's not essential.) Hope that helps. RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joshua Street Sent: 04 June 2005 03:52 To: Web Standards Group mailing list Subject: [WSG] Character encoding I've always thought that characters should be marked up with appropriate entity codes (for example, accented letters, etc.) in (X)HTML, rather than simply pasted in and left for character encoding and the user agent to take care of. I've written a plugin for the WordPress weblog software that does this for most characters ( http://www.joahua.com/blog/2005/06/04/curlyenc-03 - any discussion regarding this email to me offlist or post as comments, please, because it's software-related ), but I'm still not sure if it's required. It's just always felt dirty seeing certain characters not written in their appropriate entity codes. Could someone shed any light on this? Are entity codes redundant, or should we be using them where possible? Kind Regards, Joshua Street base10solutions Website: http://www.base10solutions.com.au/ Phone: (02) 9898-0060 Fax: (02) 8572-6021 Mobile: 0425 808 469 Multimedia Development Agency __ __ E-mails and any attachments sent from base10solutions are to be regarded as confidential. Please do not distribute or publish any of the contents of this e-mail without the senders consent. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by replying to the e-mail, and then delete the message without making copies or using it in any way. Although base10solutions takes precautions to ensure that e-mail sent from our accounts are free of viruses, we encourage recipients to undertake their own virus scan on each e-mail before opening, as base10solutions accepts no responsibility for loss or damage caused by the contents of this e-mail. __ __ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] multi-lingual
Hello John, See http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/language-decl/en/all.html#Slide006 0 and http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/#ri20040728.121358444 The lang and xml:lang attributes can and should only specify one language at a time, as they indicate the language of the text you are currently dealing with. You can indicate that the document as a whole has two primary languages using the HTTP header. Meta elements may also serve the same purpose, but it is not clear to what extent they are used by anyone. Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of john Sent: 30 May 2005 09:11 To: web standards list Subject: [WSG] multi-lingual Hello. I have a question. I've been doing a lot of multi-lingual sites lately, and I usually separate them into individual sites based on language, and indicate so properly in the code. However, one of my clients wants two languages integrated into one site (basically two languages, one next to the other, but in different colors). My question is, how do I code this so that it makes sense? For individual languages sites, I add: lang=en xml:lang=en (changing the language, of course) But if I'm putting two languages on one page, how is that done? Can I use: lang=en,pt xml:lang=en,pt (or something similar)? Thanks, in advance, for your assistance. -- ~john _ Dr. Zeus Web Design http://www.DrZeus.net content without clutter ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] style sheet set up
FWIW, my personal preference within a CSS file is to group all the properties relating to a particular selector into a single declaration. I've seen many people declare properties for, say, p in multiple locations. That makes it difficult to get a complete picture of the styles applied for p. I also tend to group together all variants on p, eg. p#first, p.second, even div#third p. hth, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bruce Gilbert Sent: 28 May 2005 17:10 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] style sheet set up is there any standard way to set up the flow of a style sheet? I usually try and use just one style sheet and start with global elements such as body, p, table, li etc. followed by elements as they flow on a page from header to footer. I use one stylesheet even though with a large site, this can become quite large. Looking for suggestions/thoughts on what others do such as multiple stylesheets vs. one big one, layout of styles, etc. thanks in advance, -- ::Bruce:: ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] mutli language websites
Hello Sam, Here are some thoughts I have on the topic... Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of sam sherlock Sent: 16 May 2005 23:34 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] mutli language websites Hello WSG List Members, I am delveloping a website that can switch between english and itallian. I am wondering if I should be using en-GB or en-gb for my lang attributes By convention language (en) is lower case, and country (GB) is upper - but it's only a convention, and actually the values are not case-sensitive. For more information see http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/ and also for the meta http-equiv=Content-Language content=en-GB / I don't know of any user agents that use the language declarations in the meta statement. I suggest you use attributes on the html element for declaring the text-processing language of a page, and consider using the HTTP header for indicating primary language metadata. For more details, see http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/ are these attributes sensitive to casing? or should I just have en also is the charset iso-8859-1 OK for italian content? As some others have suggested, why not use utf-8. It may solve problems at a later date. I would also appreciate any links to web standard sites using multiple languages? See examples of how we do it at http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset and http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/ Note that we are dealing with the odd page here and there that has a translated version. For this we use content negotiation to try to serve the person with the right page based on their browser's accept language information, but we also include links on each page. This is useful for: - people who ended up on this page because they used someone else's computer - people who are curious and need to get back to a language they recognise - people who's browser settings indicate, say, Hungarian (for which there is no translation), but would prefer to read a German version rather than English in this case (when there are both possibilities). See also Francois Yergeau's article at http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-when-lang-neg hope that helps some RI thanks in advance, Sam ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] killing the object tag
What do you guys think of this? Is their somewhere I can submit this too? From http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xhtml2-20040722/ Public discussion may take place on [EMAIL PROTECTED] (archive). To subscribe send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word subscribe in the subject line. hth RI ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] UTF-8 (was: Quirks mode vs Standards mode)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dean Jackson Sent: 19 April 2005 17:12 ... I try to avoid entities with exception for ' You're right. If you're using UTF-8 you only need to encode the characters that are special in HTML/XHTML/XML (, and ). Using numeric entities (or even named entities) in a UTF-8 file for characters that are outside the range of ASCII is usually a waste of space. The only time I use them is when I'm on a keyboard/system where I don't know how to enter the character, such as å. I'd type aring; in this case. PS. Hopefully the W3C i18n guru Richard is listening and will tell everyone if I'm wrong. Hi Dean. I'd hesitate to say anyone was right or wrong here, but I'm of the same opinion, albeit with one small exception. I think in UTF-8 NCRs/entities beyond the ASCII range can be useful for invisible characters (such as LRM in Arabic/Hebrew) or ambiguous characters (such as non-breaking space - which looks like an ordinary space). Tee mentioned some issues with Chinese characters on IE Mac that I haven't got to the bottom of yet, but I don't recall encountering any other problems that could be solved by using escapes instead. For a fuller version of my opinion see the slides starting at http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/en/all.html#Slid e0440 RI ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: OT Re: [WSG] UTF-8
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jan Brasna Sent: 19 April 2005 17:29 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: OT Re: [WSG] UTF-8 PPS. This is a good test to see if the WSG mail system can handle UTF-8 AFAIK å is Latin1 character (Scandinavian), so no need for UTF here. Yes, but the bytes used in ISO 8859-1 (Latin1) or Windows code page and those usef for UTF-8 are different. In Latin1 encoding å is a single byte: E5; whereas UTF-8 represents this as two bytes: C3 A5. So the fact that you are seeing it indicates that the system recognised the Unicode encoding :-) RI PS: You may find my Unicode converter a useful play tool for this kind of thing. It's a bit rough and ready, but it's useful. http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/uniview/conversion.en.html Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] UTF-8 (was: Quirks mode vs Standards mode)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gene Falck Sent: 19 April 2005 18:49 ... Does anyone have a good quick reference as to which characters are good on UTF-8? How about a faster or easier way to type them in? FWIW you may find this useful for Latin characters: http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/latin/ See http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/ for explanations and other scripts. RI ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Quirks mode vs Standards mode
Georg, I think the decision has more to do with maximising the expectation that your design will appear the same on any browser than to do with the features that are available. Also allowing that expectation to continue as standards and browsers move forward and browsers implement standards more fully. This being achieved by conforming to W3C specifications rather than the whim of each browser developer. In an ideal future we would have left behind browsers and browser versions that relied on Quirks mode behaviours, and no hacks or workarounds would be needed to display pages on different user agents. That may be a way off yet, but I don't see it happening at all unless we take the first steps in that direction. So I try to use standards mode whenever I can (which for me tends to be almost all of the time). Practical implications of that are that on our i18n site XHTML 1.0 pages that are served as text/html are normally uploaded without the xml declaration but in utf-8*. [btw: The links at the bottom of http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/ lead you to usefully detailed descriptions of differences between Standards and Quirks modes on Mozilla, Opera, and IE.] RI * An XML declaration is required for an XML document if the encoding of the document is other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 and the encoding is not provided by a higher level protocol, ie. the HTTP header. (For more about the implications of this on character encoding choices see http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/ Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gunlaug Sørtun Sent: 15 April 2005 11:52 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Quirks mode vs Standards mode John Britsios wrote: When a document begins with an ?xml version=1.0 encoding=utf-8? declaration. IE 6 for Windows doen't see the Doctype, so it lapses into quirks mode. Therefore I would suggest you not to use it. Might you be kind enough to tell me what IE6 has to offer in standard mode that it doesn't have in quirks mode -- apart from http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/ this? I'm asking because after 2 years of studies on the subject, I still haven't found anything useful in IE6' standard mode, but I may have missed something. seriously Georg -- http://www.gunlaug.no ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] I18n - Traditional Simplified Chinese in an English web site
Hello tee, Thanks for your explanation of the Chinese problems for Mac IE users. I'd be really grateful if you could point me to concrete examples of these problems. Let me note that my understanding is that the majority of Chinese characters display fine. My guess would be that the characters required to display link text saying Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese in Chinese would also work fine - please confirm, if you can. Wrt my suggestions, note that I said use utf-8 'if you can'. (Note also that much of the time we will be referring to use of utf-8 on pages that point to Chinese pages, rather than pages that are in Chinese, so this would not always be an issue.) I'd really like to get better quantification of the size of the problem. If you can help me there I'd be v grateful. Also, there's the difficult problem of whether we should care about people who use outdated technology. I don't think there's a good answer to that. On the other hand, user agents are free so for issues centring on *them* I'm reluctant to relieve the pressure on people to upgrade. OS issues may be slightly more problematic, but I still hope people can be encouraged to move on where possible. The Web will never move forward if we throw up our hands and always design to the lowest common denominator. But that's another topic, and not one for which there's an easy answer... RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of tee Sent: 12 April 2005 19:10 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] I18n - Traditional Simplified Chinese in an English web site Hi Richard, your answers are all very enlightened to me, especially that I intend to provide bilingual web site services. -use utf-8 as the page encoding if you can (you do Lachlan, I know) However I have a bit of doubt on this though. Don't get me wrong, I am a unicode supporter and have my Chinese page set to utf-8, despite the fact that I know very well Mac' IE 5.2 (which still have significant users) has poor support of unicode Chinese - some character are missing, some got cut of. I thought I could afford to lose this audience and I am sort of still believing it. Ever since my web site launched, 3 people email me that my Chinese site, the characters looks funny on their browsers. What a luck I have, three of them are using OS 9 with their beloved IEs. One who emailed me yesterday, actually was looking for a web designer who can make Chinese website and know the language well to help her with the content (which I am), and is a recommendation from a new client I recently got. The first sentence in her email is: How can I be sure that you did know to make Chinese website if you site is not showing up properly on my browser? I of course have a answer for her that I can have the site set to gb or big5, but to unknown audiences, you can't suggest them to switch to NN or FF, not to mention that OS 9 user has limited choice when it comes to browser. I personally know 5 people that uses Mac, their OS are 8.6 to 9.2, two of them actually have the first flat panel iMac that shipped with OS X but 9.2 by default. They did not know they can turn the OS X on. All these people are IE 5.2 users. I believe there are many more like them out there. That was the reason I make a suggestion to Lachlan that if his client cares the Chinese audience, perhaps a gb/big 5 page is more important than 'using the utf-8 whenever you can'. tee Subject: RE: [WSG] I18n - Traditional Simplified Chinese in an English web site I've been meaning for some time to write an article about this for the W3C i18n site but not yet found the time. I'll have to try harder. To help, here are some brief suggestions, based on the assumptions that you are linking to translations (rather than different country sites), and have enough space on the user interface to list all alternatives. (Disclaimer: These are quickly written stream-of-consciousness notes that haven't been reviewed.) - use the name of the target language in the native language and script as the link, eg. 'French' would be written 'franais' (note, beware of different capitalisation conventions) -use a graphic if you are concerned about users not having the appropriate font/rendering capability for the language you are showing (note that these will never be translated, so the usual translatability issue about text in graphics is mute) (note also that the person who speaks the language linked to will usually have the necessary fonts etc., so this is more of a cosmetic issue)(Of course
RE: [WSG] I18n - Traditional Simplified Chinese in an English web site
directly in the page. Hope that helps. RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lachlan Hardy Sent: 11 April 2005 15:02 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] I18n - Traditional Simplified Chinese in an English web site G'day folks! A query for those with some experience in using multiple languages in their sites: In a site that is predominantly English, select pages have been translated into both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Each page contains a link where users are able to indicate their preferred language (hence receiving translated pages as appropriate). My issue is how to show this this link appropriately Originally I had something similar to this: a href=# lang=zh-Hans title= /a (don't know this will come out in email, but the contents of the anchor and its title attribute are Simplified Chinese) However, this fails as on many computers it will appear as those horrible little blocks that indicate lack of the appropriate font Next attempt was something like: a href=#img src=# alt=Most pages will display in English, only translated pages display in Simplified Chinese. title=When selected, most pages will be in readable in English with only translated pages displaying in Simplified Chinese. /a Except of course, that doesn't give any indication of language involved. Suggestions, experiences, vague clues? Cheers, Lachlan ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] style attribute depreciated in xhtml 1.1?
Semantic markup like this also makes it much easier to change your mind as you evolve the styling, and to use alternative conventions for localized pages where appropriate. RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alan Trick Sent: 15 March 2005 19:20 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] style attribute depreciated in xhtml 1.1? Thanks, Sounds like a good idea, plus it saves me the headache of validating their css. Alan Trick Vlad Alexander (XStandard) wrote: Hi Alan, Both span class=red and span style=color:#f00 are bad. How about BBtags this: [important] [highlight] [note] [misc] then you use this markup: em class=important em class=hightlight .. Regards, -Vlad http://xstandard.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
Oops. Of course that URI should have read: http://www.w3.org/International/technique-index#language From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Ishida Sent: 25 February 2005 08:30 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages John, You should indeed declare the page to be Vietnamese, and if there are English passages or phrases embedded in the file you should declare those to be English on the elements that surround them. For an explanation of this, see our new techniques index at http://localhost/International/technique-index#language (note that this allows you to drill down to 2 further levels of detail). RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
Hello Lea,
I note that you used incorrect syntax for your CSS declarations - ending
declarations with ':' rather than ';'. I assume this is just a typo in this
message, rather than the potential source of the problems you had, since in
a CSS file it would generally cause the declaration to fail.
RI
Richard Ishida
W3C
contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
W3C Internationalization:
http://www.w3.org/International/
Publication blog:
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lea de Groot
Sent: 21 February 2005 21:05
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 09:43:40 -, Richard Ishida wrote:
In any case you should always finish a font-family declaration with
'serif' or 'sans-serif' in this situation. Then if none of
the fonts
you indicated are on the user's system, a font that they do
have will
be used.
Caveat alert!
Errr, sort of an inverse caveat, if you take this too far.
I had a site where I thought 'I do not care what font this
part appears in, let them choose which serif font it has and used:
#block {font-family: serif: }
Bad move :(
Some versions of IE (some V6 variant IIRC) showed a lovely
set of black square blocks instead of text. :( We checked the
browser and it didn't have a bizarre selection as its default font.
Changing the declaration to a simple:
#block {font-family: Times, serif: }
fixed the problem.
FYI
Lea
--
Lea de Groot
Elysian Systems - I Understand the Internet
http://elysiansystems.com/ Search Engine Optimisation,
Usability, Information Architecture, Web Design Brisbane, Australia
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RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dejan Kozina Sent: 20 February 2005 22:46 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Other character sets/languages More generally, inputing characters not native to my keyboard/OS is to me the most annoying part of it all (I routinely have to input central-european stuff by switching the keyboard layout, meaning I had to remember which key becomes which). If you have the luck to get your content already typed, copy/paste is much more error-proof than the alternatives. Then you might like these pickers - designed for non-native user input. (Note that the Latin diacritics picker probably includes most of what's needed for Vietnamese.) http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/ Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dejan Kozina
Sent: 21 February 2005 04:49
One thing I've just thought of. The final hurdle in letting the world
see vietnamese text is hoping that the visitor's browser has a font
capable of displaying the text. There is not much you can do if it
doesn't, but if it has one you should allow the browser to choose it
avoiding to declare a font-family for that part of the page.
Most likely, people who want to read (not look at) Vietnamese text will have
fonts that support the characters.
Note also that you can specify your prefered font in the CSS, but the
font-family property allows you to specify more than one font for fallback
support. For example, if you research the user base and discover that there are
two or three Unicode fonts in common use, you can include them all. In any
case you should always finish a font-family declaration with 'serif' or
'sans-serif' in this situation. Then if none of the fonts you indicated are on
the user's system, a font that they do have will be used.
eg. body { font-family: My preferred viet font, An alternative font,
sans-serif; ... }
hth
RI
Richard Ishida
W3C
contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
W3C Internationalization:
http://www.w3.org/International/
Publication blog:
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
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RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gene Falck Sent: 20 February 2005 04:26 OK, I understand about the BOM but this still leaves me wondering how to save properly. I usually code using Notepad which offers, from the Save As... menu choice, the Encoding options: ANSI Unicode Unicode big endian UTF-8 but no UTF-6 BOM. How can I be sure I am saving in the right way? People on the list may also find the following resource useful. It indicates how to save files in UTF-8 from a number of different editing environments. Setting encoding in web authoring applications http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-setting-encoding-in-application s Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gene Falck
Sent: 20 February 2005 04:26
OK, I understand about the BOM but this still leaves me
wondering how to save properly. I usually code using Notepad
which offers, from the Save As... menu choice, the Encoding options:
ANSI
Unicode
Unicode big endian
UTF-8
but no UTF-6 BOM. How can I be sure I am saving in the right way?
I think you need to use a different editor, or (as I do) strip the BOM off
before publishing.
You may also find the following article useful. It explains the BOM and the
effects it can sometimes have on pages when present:
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-utf8-bom
FAQ: Unexpected characters or blank lines
Here is the code of a Perl script I use to strip the BOM. It's just a quick
hack, nothing beautiful, but it may help you or others when you cannot avoid
saving with a BOM. (I call it by invoking a batch file in my Windows
directory: removebom filename.)
===
# program to remove a leading UTF-8 BOM from a file
# works both STDIN - STDOUT and on the spot (with filename as argument)
if ($#ARGV 0) {
print STDERR Too many arguments!\n;
exit;
}
my @file; # file content
my $lineno = 0;
my $filename = @ARGV[0];
if ($filename) {
open( BOMFILE, $filename ) || die Could not open source file for
reading.;
while (BOMFILE) {
if ($lineno++ == 0) {
if ( index( $_, '?' ) == 0 ) {
s/^\xEF\xBB\xBF//;
print BOM found and removed.\n;
}
else { print No BOM found.\n; }
}
push @file, $_ ;
}
close (BOMFILE) || die Can't close source file after reading.;
open (NOBOMFILE, $filename) || die Could not open source file
for writing.;
foreach $line (@file) {
print NOBOMFILE $line;
}
close (NOBOMFILE) || die Can't close source file after writing.;
}
else { # STDIN - STDOUT
while () {
if (!$lineno++) {
s/^\xEF\xBB\xBF//;
}
push @file, $_ ;
}
foreach $line (@file) {
print $line;
}
}
===
HTH
RI
Richard Ishida
W3C
contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
W3C Internationalization:
http://www.w3.org/International/
Publication blog:
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
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See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
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RE: [WSG] Other character sets/languages
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gene Falck Sent: 20 February 2005 04:26 In this matter, I am also wondering where using a meta tag specifying iso-8859-1 fits in terms of following the standards. I notice many people do this and I gather the actual coding of keystrokes (on a standard PC keyboard set up for US English) should be the same. Is saving a file as UTF-8 compatible with the iso-8859-1 meta tag? Nope. Please save the file in the same encoding as you declare it to be in the meta statement. This seems to be such a common question/mistake that the W3C is beginning to write an article on the subject. The basic ASCII set of characters (ie. the first 127 characters) use the same bytes in iso 8895-1 and utf-8, but as soon as you include a copyright sign, an accented character, etc, you will have problems. Besides which, it is always better to be consistent anyway, and doesn't cost much. hth RI ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Validating unicode files
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kevin Futter Sent: 13 December 2004 01:28 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] Validating unicode files On 13/12/04 8:23 AM, Matthew Cruickshank [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi chaps, When it comes to text encoding the character range from 127-255 is, as I understand it, disputed territory. In that all kinds of regional hacks were used over the years and with Unicode they're no longer neccessary so I should avoid this range. I was just copying some text together and my xml parser didn't like it because of some characters in this range. See W3C's FAQ HTML, XHTML, XML and Control Codes http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-controls It seems that even when you tell notepad.exe to save as utf-8 it sometimes doesn't. I've never experienced that. It only saves as something else if I forget to do SaveAs or remove the byte order mark. Also, you should make sure that your server is not overriding the encoding of your file by serving an incorrect HTTP header. So is there a bit of software to validate UTF-8 encoded files? The W3C Validator works fine on UTF-8 encoded files. It can also be useful for determining the encoding of your file. .Matthew Cruickshank http://holloway.co.nz/ My understanding is that it's a known 'feature' of Notepad to add some internal proprietary identifier to UTF-8 encoded files that actually render them invalid, so-to-speak. I'm sure someone else can explain it better than I just did! See W3C's FAQ Unexpected characters or blank lines http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-utf8-bom (esp the background) The UTF-8 BOM or signature doesn't render the file invalid, but may produce some unexpected effects in certain browsers. I've found this article quite useful, though it may not necessarily directly address your problem: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html -- Kevin Futter Webmaster, St. Bernard's College http://www.sbc.melb.catholic.edu.au/ Hope that helps. (Please let me know if there's a way to improve our articles, or add useful new ones.) Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please
Boke, There is no reason at all that the validator would choke on Turkish characters, if the text is properly encoded in utf-8. I ran a test, and think I know what the problem is. If you run the validator on your current page [1], but tell it that the encoding is utf-8 (which it is not - it's iso-8859-9), you get exactly the same error message. This suggests to me that you didn't actually save your file as UTF-8, you just changed the encoding declaration in the meta tag. You should try saving the file as utf-8 (see how to do this for various editors [2]), and change the encoding declaration. Then it should work. RI [1] http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fira.com.tr%2Fy%2Fcharset=utf -8doctype=Inlineverbose=1 [2] http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-setting-encoding-in-application s Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Boke Yuzgen Sent: 22 November 2004 21:35 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please Lang attributes: Fixed. UTF-8 instead of ISO: Here's the validator's message: Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on lines 7-9, 11, 79, 84, 86-87, 89-92, 101, 104-107, 114 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication. It doesn't like the Turkish characters. I simply won't write any UTF-8 codes while writing an article to my web site. If it doesn't validate my web page some day some how because of Turkish characters, I won't mind if my pages render correct. If my pages don't render correct with the Turkish characters in the code, I will use Flash. ;) Because English speaking people can simply write for the web by hitting one character they know. Why shoulf non-English speaking people like me bother character entities etc? Also, I know I can use findreplace on multi files at the same time, but I won't do that. Then I will have to backup two copies of each page (eg. if I want to use my text elsewhere, what will I do then? Reconvert to the original?). - Why? - Because W3C said so. Thank you for your comment. --- Boke Yuzgen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I will fix lang when I go home. I'm at work now. I use W3C's validator. I will also post the error it reports when I use UTF-8 when I go home. Thank you, --- Richard Ishida [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Interesting. Which validator are you using? By rights, it shouldn't validate as is, since XML requires an XML declaration (ie. ?xml version=1.0 encoding=iso-8859-9?) when not using utf-8. Did you note the comment about lang attributes? RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Boke Yuzgen Sent: 22 November 2004 12:49 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please Idid it first, but my pages won't validate if I use UTF-8. --- Richard Ishida [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please change html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=en lang=en to html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=tr lang=tr Have you considered using UTF-8, rather than charset=iso-8859-9 ? Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Boke Yuzgen Sent: 22 November 2004 09:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please Hi, Can you please review this site? Site language is not English. http://yuzgen.com/ Thanks in advance, -- Boke Yuzgen ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help
RE: [WSG] turkish text - can you assign a language or encoding to a div?
Hello Ted, Bear in mind that language declarations are totally separate from character encodings. For example, French can be encoded in several different ways, and utf-8 can represent many different languages. Language information is used for things like spellchecking, styling, speech synthesis, etc. Character encoding indicates what characters should be interpreted from the bytes in the code. Note also that there can only be a single encoding for a page. Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ted Drake Sent: 22 November 2004 22:00 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WSG] turkish text - can you assign a language or encoding to a div? If you are doing a web site and you only have sporadic use of turkish characters, can't you wrap that text in a div and assign it a language? I haven't done this before so I'm asking not suggesting. But I thought that I have seen that as a semantic way to show that there will be languages other than the native on a page. Now, is there also a way to designate the character encoding on a div or span? Ted Lang attributes: Fixed. UTF-8 instead of ISO: Here's the validator's message: Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on lines 7-9, 11, 79, 84, 86-87, 89-92, 101, 104-107, 114 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication. It doesn't like the Turkish characters. I simply won't write any UTF-8 codes while writing an article to my web site. If it doesn't validate my web page some day some how because of Turkish characters, I won't mind if my pages render correct. If my pages don't render correct with the Turkish characters in the code, I will use Flash. ;) Because English speaking people can simply write for the web by hitting one character they know. Why shoulf non-English speaking people like me bother character entities etc? Also, I know I can use findreplace on multi files at the same time, but I won't do that. Then I will have to backup two copies of each page (eg. if I want to use my text elsewhere, what will I do then? Reconvert to the original?). - Why? - Because W3C said so. Thank you for your comment. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please
Please change html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=en lang=en to html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=tr lang=tr Have you considered using UTF-8, rather than charset=iso-8859-9 ? Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Boke Yuzgen Sent: 22 November 2004 09:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please Hi, Can you please review this site? Site language is not English. http://yuzgen.com/ Thanks in advance, -- Boke Yuzgen __ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! http://my.yahoo.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please
Interesting. Which validator are you using? By rights, it shouldn't validate as is, since XML requires an XML declaration (ie. ?xml version=1.0 encoding=iso-8859-9?) when not using utf-8. Did you note the comment about lang attributes? RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Boke Yuzgen Sent: 22 November 2004 12:49 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please Idid it first, but my pages won't validate if I use UTF-8. --- Richard Ishida [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please change html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=en lang=en to html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=tr lang=tr Have you considered using UTF-8, rather than charset=iso-8859-9 ? Hope that helps, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Boke Yuzgen Sent: 22 November 2004 09:12 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WSG] yuzgen.com review please Hi, Can you please review this site? Site language is not English. http://yuzgen.com/ Thanks in advance, -- Boke Yuzgen ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] choosing encoding, charset and using special characters
Hello Julin, At the W3C we wrote some material to answer your questions. Please see: http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/ and http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-character.html (still early draft!) Please take a look (and let me know if there is any way we can improve the material). Cheers, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dejan Kozina Sent: 22 November 2004 01:44 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] choosing encoding, charset and using special characters Julin Landerreche wrote: 1) Question: Is there a way to use special characters directly in the code? Two ways, actually, both requiring the pages being displayed as utf-8. One is writing the document with an editor capable of saving text as utf-8 (Unired is the one I like - http://www.esperanto.mv.ru/UniRed/ENG/), so that anything you can key or paste in it will be stored correctly and rendered as expected, as long as you remember to put a meta http-equiv=content-type content=text/html; charset=utf-8 in your page's head. The other one is using a browser's form to input the text and send it to some sort of CMS. Provided the page with the form is utf-8 too, all modern browsers will convert the whole stuff to utf-8 while uploading. 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)? According to my experience, it is OK to do it using Unicode, otherwise you're relying on unwarranted assumptions regarding the native codepage of the reader's machine (example: if you use an in your source it will probably be displayed as such on any Spanish and generally western language OS, but it will become a c on most Central European PCs). As long as you declare the encoding of your page, and that encoding contains the character you want to display, it is better to use characters rather than escapes. Apart from anything else, it improves maintainability and reduces bandwidth. 3. In Google results, I found that those special characters arent always correctly displayed. Google uses utf-8 for display, so your browser renders the title as if it was encoded as such. 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. You presumably mean ISO-8859-1 (rather than 8850). Note that the W3C now serves its pages using utf-8. It makes life a lot easier when you have multilingual pages or a number of pages in multiple languages. You can try using the numeric character references (written as #xxx, where xxx is the decimal value of the character) or the hexadecimal ones (written as #x, where is the hex value of the same). The complete list of references is at ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/. Note that the numeric value MUST be a Unicode code point value, whatever the encoding you are using. There are easier ways of finding a Unicode code point. For example, you could try my UniView utility at http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/utilities.html 3. If I change to UTF-8... wich are the advantages / disvantages? The main advantages are correct rendering in all modern browsers - OSes, plus the possibility of hassle-free mixing of characters from any charset on a single page. Besides this, it is rapidly becoming the standard encoding for all sort of documents, on the web or otherwise. As alluded to above. Significant advantages also arise when receiving form data from multilingual pages and storing it centrally. You don't need to figure out which encoding was used, and convert. Hope that helps. RI There are disavantages: Netscape 4.7 mostly doesn't recognize the characters (except for the first 127 that are part of ASCII) and MacOS 9 and below has sometimes a weird way of displaying them. One final word about the document title: even if you place the above meta before the title tag and tweak your server to transmit the correct MIME type almost any browser around will still use the OS's default 'window title' font for the title, so it will be displayed as expected only if that font contains the required glyphs (or shapes). It will display correctly in Google listings, nevertheless. -- Dejan Kozina Web Design Studio Dolina 346 (TS) I-34018 Trst/Trieste - Italy tel./fax: +39 040 228 436 cell.: +39 348 7355 225 http://www.kozina.com/ e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED
RE: [WSG] choosing encoding, charset and using special characters
Hola Manuel, Dejan, There are pros and cons to using the HTTP header to declare the encoding. At the W3C we recommend that you always declare encoding inside the document, whether or not you use the HTTP header. Unlike something like language declaration, the meta statement for character encoding declarations is very widely recognised, and is the only in-document means to declare encoding for HTML. If serving XHTML you need to also consider the pros and cons of using the XML declaration. For more detail, see http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/ and http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-character.html (still early draft!) Cheers, RI Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Manuel González Noriega Sent: 22 November 2004 09:40 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] choosing encoding, charset and using special characters [UTF-8] it will be stored correctly and rendered as expected, as long as you remember to put a meta http-equiv=content-type content=text/html; charset=utf-8 in your page's head. Actually, what you should be doing is getting the server to send the right content-type header. Meta elements are not authoritative and in fact lead many people to confusion when they are superceded by the server headers. -- Manuel a veces :) a veces :( pero siempre trabajando duro para Simplelógica: apariencia, experiencia y comunicación en la web. http://simplelogica.net # (+34) 985 22 12 65 ¡Ah! y escribiendo en Logicola: http://simplelogica.net/logicola/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Another body tag question ... [Use of dir]
FWIW, I consider this likely to be an incorrect usage of dir. The default
is ltr, so it is hard to imagine a need for it on the body tag, though it's
not incorrect to specify. However, direction should normally be specified
for the html tag rather than body (it's inherited). And if it is expressed,
it should use the bidi attributes provided for documents served as
HTML/XHTML, rather than CSS, to indicate default directionality and
directional changes.
ie. if you are going to specify ltr directionality, better use:
html dir=ltr
For more info:
Authoring Techniques for XHTML HTML Internationalization: see techniques
starting with
http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/outline/html-authoring-outline
.html#ri20030728.094313871 (click on the directives to get more detailed
info)(note: still in draft form)
FAQ: CSS vs. markup for bidi support
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-css-markup
RI
Richard Ishida
W3C
contact info:
http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
W3C Internationalization:
http://www.w3.org/International/
Publication blog:
http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Neerav
Sent: 14 November 2004 05:22
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Another body tag question ...
direction:ltr = direction of text is left - right as opposed
to some langauges which are right to left
http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_text_direction.asp
http://www.topxml.com/css/css_property_direction.asp
Neerav Bhatt
http://www.bhatt.id.au
Web Development IT consultancy
http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/ - Ramblings Thoughts
http://www.bhatt.id.au/photos/
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/neerav
Michael Kear wrote:
Another body style question following from Felix's rant ...
I looked at what Yahoo do in their style,
(http://www.yahoo.com) and
they have the following as their body style:
body{font:84%/1.2em arial,sans-serif;direction:ltr}
What's the point of setting the body font at 84% of 1.2em?
(which is
what I assume is what's happening). That's 100.8% if my
arithmetic is
correct, so is there any point to this instead of setting
it to 100%/1.0em?
What does the 'direction:ltr' part do?
Cheers
Mike Kear
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RE: [WSG] International Pages Check
Hello Jason, Paul, Apart from the fact that a user would not always like to see their language associated with the flag of another country, there are other reasons for not using flags. If you want to specify Swiss German, vs Swiss French vs. Swiss Italian sites, you need a second level of choice than that offered by the national flag. Best use the name of the language in the language and script of the country. (For help with this see http://people.w3.org/rishida/names/languages.html ) Note also that the language expressed in the DOCTYPE should not be changed - the DTD is in English. It's the html language attribute that you should change. (I had to explain this to someone recently, so thought I'd mention it.) At the W3C we have been working on the ins and outs of language declarations over the past months (from a content author's perspective). It wasn't as straightforward as we thought! Please take a look at Authoring Techniques for XHTML HTML Internationalization: Specifying the language of content 1.0 [1] for the latest in-edit version of our recommendations. (There's also an attempt to make it easier to get advice on this via a summary page at [2]). For an example of how we do this (on pages that are actually content-language negotiated too), see [3]. Hope that helps, RI [1] http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/tech-lang.html [2] http://www.w3.org/International/geo/html-tech/outline/html-authoring-outline .html [3] http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset Richard Ishida W3C contact info: http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/ W3C Internationalization: http://www.w3.org/International/ Publication blog: http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jason Foss Sent: 14 November 2004 20:56 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [WSG] International Pages Check Thanks for the link Paul - that's a good one. Rick: Thanks for checking it out. I thought about the caption idea, and at first thought yeah, that makes sense, but then I figured that if you don't recognise the flag, there's a fair chance you won't speak the language anyway! Or am I just being belligerent? If I'm going to add captions they should be in the foreign language? Cheers Jason. PS is the server still slow? Temporary issue I hope... On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 03:27:24 -0700, Paul Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is no language identified in the DOCTYPE and the html tag (I only checked the Spanish and Mandarin pages). |This link may be helpful:| |http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_7_identifying_your_language.html || || |Paul| || || || Jason Foss wrote: Hi all, This site is still well and truly in draft stage (I know - the menu is still up the spout!) but looking for feedback specifically on the internationalisation of the following pages: http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-german.php http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-swedish.php http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-spanish.php http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-mandarin.php http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-cantonese.php http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-japanese.php http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-korean.php http://www.rrdl.com.au/cqieta/info-thai.php First time I've had a crack at foreign character sets - any feedback on this aspect of the site would be much appreciated! Cheers Jason ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** -- Jason Foss Almost Anything Desktop Publishing www.almost-anything.com.au Windows Messenger: [EMAIL PROTECTED] North Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia We can do almost anything! ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
