my name is Juli�n, i'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I have read this great tutorial (http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/) recommended by WSG . The article makes things more clearly to me, but not totally..
I feel this topic (choosing encoding and using special characters) is a difficult one to be understood by newbies in standards (as I am) and not newbies.
But I think it�s a bit difficult for me, because I write in spanish, so I usually need to use special characters like �, � or �.
I have choose to use the ISO-8859-1 as charset for my webpages. And I use to code special characters with html entity references. Example: � = é � = ú � = ñ etc.
Well, let me ask a few questions:
1) Question: Is there a way to use special characters directly in the code?
I would like to use directly � or � or �, and not to code them as html entities references.
Hey, dont think I'm a lazy boy: just suppose this situation: if I have a blog, I cannot expect that people (who post comments on my blog) knows how to use html entities referencies.
Surely, they will prefer to type the special characters (�, �, �).
I wont like that if they use special characters in a post, then the post cant correctly displayed (i.e. by showing those weird characters like the black "?" or "é" or "ú" ...)
2) I have seen a lot of webpages that directly use the special character and dont code them as html entities. This pages are displayed correctly.
Question: Is this a good or bad practice (to use special characters in code, instead of entities)?
3. In Google results, I found that those special characters arent always correctly displayed.
Example: my webpage title in a two Google searchs result.
i). "servicio técnico especializado para músicos" (buuuu!) a. encoding: UTF-8 b. charset: ISO-8859-1 (from a page managed by Textpattern)
ii). servicio t�cnico especializado para m�sicos a. encoding: ISO-5-8859-1 b. charset: ISO-8859-1 (from a page managed by other script, or from hardcoded pages)
Question: Is there a way to force or override the encoding (not the charset) directly from the page code?
I think that my textpattern managed pages should have ISO-8850-1 encoding.
(This is a question I also must do in textpattern forums, because I dont know why pages managed by TXP have UTF-8 encoding, as there isnt any any line in my whole site headers that shows "utf-8")
3. If I change to UTF-8...
a. wich are the advantages / disvantages?
b. I have test it in few of my pages -> all special characters (not encoded as entities) are incorrectly displayed... yucks!
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Well, I think that's all, just to start.
I would like to read more resources about encoding and charset, and also read experiences from the people of this list.
Y tambi�n me gustar�a leer experiencias de gente que habla (y escribe p�ginas) en espa�ol, �hay alguien en la lista?
Gracias a todos! Thank you! Excuse my poor english! Juli�n Landerreche Buenos Aires, Argentina www.midi-midi.com.ar (not finished yet) ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
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