Samuel Murray (Groenkloof):
Thomas Scholz wrote:
This depends on the MIME type...
I think it depends on the browser :-)
Both. :)
Any other entity might be shown literal.
Is there a list somewhere on the web of which browsers show them literal?
Sorry, I don’t have such a list, and I avoid XHTML since 2002, so … sorry.
Some older user agents (Opera 7...) do exactly that.
Earlier versions of Opera implemented the standards very strictly, and
as a result, many web sites did not work correctly in Opera. Then the
Opera people got smart and started implementing what they call "street
HTML", if Opera detects that a page is possibly non-compliant.
Now, you’re talking about text/html. This quite a different situation.
There is no doctype switch real XHTML.
So: If you don’t use real UTF-8, use numeric character references, eg.
… not ….
I think a reason why hellip may be used is because it is easy to "read"
what the character is. It is an ellips. If numbered codes were used,
translators would not know what the code means unless they used a
look-up table, and volunteer translators tend not to use look-up tables
-- they prefer educated guesswork, which in the case of numbered
entities can be dangerous.
I’m not so pessimistic. Anyway, I don’t recommend replacemends at all;
numeric references are just more safe.
My own opinion is to reduce the "fancy" characters to a minimum.
What are fancy characters? Вы не говорите по-русски?
A translator needs a working knowledge of HTML anyway. Replacing or
adding verbose descriptions of entities isn't worth it.
Antithesis: A translator needs basic knowledge of character encoding
anyway.
This applies to trained, professional translators. Volunteer
translators are often amateurs and have very little training. One has
to be pragmatic -- a logical, easy to use system is better than
something which is correct only from a purist's point of view.
The only thing a translator has to know is this:
Do you know of PO editors that make it easy for translators to type the
raquo and the hellip? Neither PoEdit nor Virtaal does.
This is not a function of the editor but of the general environment:
operating system wide settings.
There are many tools like Allchars <http://allchars.zwolnet.com/> or
browser widgets <http://widgets.opera.com/widget/3693/>.
I think most translators are smart enough to use these tools. Some hints
in the language files could help, of course.
Thomas
--
Redaktion, Druck- und Webdesign
http://toscho.de
0160/1764727
Twitter: @toscho
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