Re: Is there pi?

[Masayasu Ishikawa]
>crism@exemplary.net (Christopher R. Maden) wrote:
>
>> However, π will only work in HTML 4.0 browsers; π will only
>> work in some browsers if the document character encoding is defined as
>> UTF-8 or another full Unicode encoding;
>
>To clarify: numeric character references should work regardless of
>character encoding.  π SHALL be interpreted as "GREEK SMALL
>LETTER PI" even if the document is encoded in US-ASCII (or whatever).
>Indeed there are some user agents which incorrectly treat NCRs
>differently depending on character encoding, but please note that
>such behavior is non-conforming.

Yes.  The behavior nonetheless exists - Netscape 4 (4.0 on Macintosh and
4.something on Solaris) is where I have encountered this.  MSIE on Windows
behaves properly; I don't know about on Macintosh.  Lynx, of course,
performs properly.

Designing a Web page based on SHALL is a fun exercise, but not very useful.
WILL is the relevant word for Joyce's question.

>Some pre-XML browsers support hexadecimal numeric character references,
>sush as Alis Technologies' Tango browser.  Tango does display π
>as "GREEK SMALL LETTER PI".

Tango added that feature after the XML WG developed the &#x convention.  I
didn't say that only XML browsers supported it, but that only browsers
developed after XML did.  Supporting something before it exists is
difficult.

-Chris

--
Christopher R. Maden, Solutions Architect
Exemplary Technologies
One Embarcadero Center, Ste. 2405
San Francisco, CA 94111