Re: greek char in UTF-8

jeff.hickey@edwardjones.com wrote:
> No, you cannot display all greek characters in ANY default font.  
> If your browser does not have a character set that matches the 
> encoding, it will typically default to the ASCII character set, 
> resulting in garbled text or an "empty box" to use your term.

No.

Firstly, the character set in use here is Unicode. There is no need to
switch 8-bit code pages and so forth.

Secondly, that character set is being correctly labelled and correctly
recognised, so there is no worry about sniffing - the characters are being
correctly transmitted.

Thirdly, the default font may or may not have glyphs for Greek characters,
depending on the OS. For example, I am using Windows 2000 and the default
fonts do, indeed, have glyphs for Greek amongst others.

Fourthly, conformant behavious on encountering a character for which there
is no glyph is to display some symbol such as an empty box. However, if you
select that text, copy iit and paste it into an application that *can*
display it, the characters should all be preserved. It is an issue of
rendering glyphs, not of understanding characters.

Only if the browser misunderstands, or is not Unidode enabled, or the
content is incorrectly labelled, will one get "garbage characters".

> I understand Microsoft has INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE SUPPORT from their 
> 'products update' site windowsupdate.microsoft.com. But you get 
> fonts "they choose" do give you. 

Right, but you are free to purchase or download other ones. In general, the
language packs are providing additionaldisplay capability for the OS, as
well as just fonts.
 
> I don't believe, Netscape provides language packs. 

Thats because they are providing a browser, not an operating system.

> You could purchase character set fonts from Bitstream, AGFA Monotype, or Dynalab to name a few. 

You could, but the exact same fonts used by any other application are also
available for use in Netscape.

> Or downloaded the language packs from Microsoft, and adapted them for use with Netscape. 

Adapt in what way?

>  (I've never done it myself, but have heard of it being done.) 

Right ;-)

> Be sure in EDIT<PREFERENCES<Appearances<FONT you select "Use my deault_fonts, overriding document-specified fonts", so you maintain control of the fonts you are capable of displaying.

This is completely unnecessary. And inded, for the sample page given as an
example, doing so would actually prevent the webfonts referenced in the CSS
being actually applied.

--
Chris

Received on Friday, 5 May 2000 20:34:00 UTC