Re: Xhtml /CSS validator- umlaut problem

I think you've just discovered the cost of using Microsoft software,
and its approach to standards. For example, Microsoft Word is using
Unicode internally these days (which is a lot of bloat for roman text 
- I believe unicode introduces more problems than it solves).

Open and edit an old Word doc and you can end up with a mix of unicode
and ascii. Word has to edit old HTML pages produced in Word (which
were pretty hideous, since Word had no idea of standards), so casually
tidies up and replaces any old junk it thinks it might have generated
with new, preferred junk.

And this webtv editor appears to be be based on similar assumptions
(and code?) to Word.  Those assumptions are fine if you only ever use
Microsoft products, are happy with a sliding file format containing a
mix of who-knows-what, and never have to meet documented standards; if
Microsoft products wrote to standards in the first place, their
assumptions would not be necessary.

I suppose you could try raising this with webtv tech support... lots
of luck!

cheers,

L.


On Thu, 16 Aug 2001 cwdjrx@webtv.net wrote:

>   I am using two editors, but both give the same problems with umlauts.
> The first edtor is on the main frames of the Microsoft WebTV service.
> The WebTV box itself has only a small  cache memory; it uses the  MS
> WebTV main frames for editing, etc. 
>   The second editor is at the wtv-zone service. They are a pay service
> that supplies web page space, editors, etc. They have their own main
> frames that are not related to WebTV. 
>   The WebTV page builder and editor is designed for very simple
> operation . The wtv-zone file editor is set up like that on most PC's ,
> and you can type in everything from the DOCTYPE to the closing html.
>   Thus the two editors likely are quite different.I had experience with
> large main frames at work before I retired. 
>  The WebTV service supplies my home needs for now. Should I need to do
> serious data storage or number crunching, then I would have to buy a PC. 

and later adds:

>  Yet another interesting thing has happened. When one replaces the
> umlauts with "ä",etc., the CSS validates for xhtml
> strict. However, if one goes back to edit the page, the  "ä",
> etc. terms are gone and replaced by the starting ä, etc. Then when
> one goes to the CSS validator, the page will not validate just as
> before any changes were made. This means that all of the umlauts
> must be replaced perfectly the first time, and any more editing
> requires replacement of all of the umlauts by "ä",etc. again.

<L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk>PGP<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/>

Received on Friday, 17 August 2001 07:03:32 UTC