(unknown charset) Re: techniques doc: character entity references for math symbols

My experience with Netscape4.51 is that is displays correctly a
great deal of math symbols if 
 1. they are marked with decimal references
 2. in addition the page is served with charset=utf-8

I have heard rumors to this effect for other 4.x versions.

Internet explorer 5 does support (most) math symbols, both
decimal and hexadecimal, and also name entities, but with name
entities less symbols are supported.

Lynx 2.8.1 supports *all* math symbols in *all* the different
ways you can think of. This browser, however does not "support"
the FONT face bug.

My expreince in with Windows95.

A possible modification of the guidelines is to use images with
alt text according to HTML4.0, this way both Lynx and old, buggy,
and non-standard graphical browsers will display correctly.

The <FONT face> thing is not valid HTML because it attempts to
add new characters with a mechanism intended to suggest
apearance of characters. 

Nir Dagan

http://www.nirdagan.com
mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
tel:+972-2-588-3143

"There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory."
-- A. Einstein

On Mon, 3 May 1999, Wendy A Chisholm wrote:

> Hello, Some of you may get this twice - those of you who have previously
> participated in the math and science discussions. If you are able, a response
> by the end of the day would be appreciated. From my tests, most of the
> character entities defined in HTML4 for math symbols were NOT supported by
> Communicator 4 and Explorer 4. Thus, is the following technique valid? 
> >
> > 2. Do not use  to "generate" mathematical symbols. Use HTML character
> entities
> > (or numerical reference) instead. (FONT face should be used only for
> > suggesting style) For example: a to generate the Greek lower case alpha.
> this
> > is incorrect as a conforming browser should render the Latin letter lower
> > case a in this case. 
> 
> Follows is part of the source file that I tested - the character entity
> information is taken from the HTML4 Rec.. In communicator I get question
> marks,
> in Explorer I get boxes. If you are able to produce something else, please let
> me know what I have missed. I don't see that "symbol" is a valid attribute of
> "face" but I tried it anyway, just for grins. Using FONT face for the whole
> doc
> produces interesting results  Also note that the *only* character entities
> that
> are recognized are the last two (for division). It seems that everything
> included in the list of "Character entity references for ISO 8859-1
> characters"
> is supported by both. However, note that very few in this ISO list are related
> to math.    
> 
>   -- greek capital letter alpha, U+0391 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter beta, U+0392 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter gamma, U+0393 ISOgrk3 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter delta, U+0394 ISOgrk3 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter epsilon, U+0395 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter zeta, U+0396 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter eta, U+0397 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter theta, U+0398 ISOgrk3 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter iota, U+0399 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter kappa, U+039A 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter lambda, U+039B ISOgrk3 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter mu, U+039C 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter nu, U+039D 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter xi, U+039E ISOgrk3 
> 
>  -- greek capital letter omicron, U+039F 
> 
>   -- greek capital letter pi, U+03A0 ISOgrk3 
> 
> ! -- greek capital letter rho, U+03A1 
> 
>  -- for all, U+2200 ISOtech 
> 
>  -- partial differential, U+2202 ISOtech 
> 
>  -- there exists, U+2203 ISOtech 
> 
>  -- empty set = null set = diameter, U+2205 ISOamso 
> 
>  -- nabla = backward difference, U+2207 ISOtech 
> 
>  -- element of, U+2208 ISOtech 
> 
> 	 -- not an element of, U+2209 ISOtech 
> 
>  -- contains as member, U+220B ISOtech 
> 
>  -- n-ary product = product sign, U+220F ISOamsb 
>  
> 
> &divide; is a more convenient form than w
> ........ 
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 3 May 1999 12:55:50 UTC