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lynx-dev RE: UTF-8 in web pages (fwd)
From: |
dickey |
Subject: |
lynx-dev RE: UTF-8 in web pages (fwd) |
Date: |
Mon, 8 Feb 1999 05:22:52 -0500 (EST) |
Forwarded message:
> From address@hidden Mon Feb 8 03:11:56 1999
> Message-Id: <address@hidden>
> Errors-To: address@hidden
> X-Uml-Sequence: 7217 (1999-02-08 07:37:17 GMT)
> From: Chris Pratley <address@hidden>
> To: Unicode List <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 23:37:16 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: RE: UTF-8 in web pages
>
>
> >>And most do not come configured for UTF-8 out of the box, which is the
> real
> >>show-stopper now for more widespread use of that charset.
>
> Actually, if you measure by number of users, I think UTF-8 capable browsers
> are easily over 50% now. UTF-8 works well in Internet Explorer 4.01 and
> higher, and from what I can tell it seems to function in Navigator 4.03 and
> higher. Together, current research shows that those two (and later versions
> of them) plus other browsers based on IE technologies (and Tango) account
> for somewhere around 75% of the installed user base. So, we're making
> progress. (Note that things work much better in these browsers if you label
> the file as UTF-8 using the META tag).
>
> That said, you can maintain reasonable backward compatibility by using
> legacy encodings (e.g. Shift-JIS) that support the majority of your page's
> content, plus Unicode NCRs for the remainder. That way your content is as
> visible as it can be, and the same browsers that support UTF-8 (roughly)
> support Unicode NCRs. The only drawback is that the size of your file may
> slightly increase. UTF-8 cleaner and easier though, so the sooner we can all
> move to that, the better.
>
> BTW Chris Wendt can comment, but I believe that IE also uses the lang
> attribute to pick a suitable font, if one is available.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Francois Yergeau [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Sunday, February 07, 1999 10:00 AM
> To: Unicode List
> Subject: RE: UTF-8 in web pages
>
> À 21:18 06/02/99 -0800, Adrian Havill a écrit :
> >but are
> >there any browsers out there that plan to implement this (choosing a font
> >appropriate for a particular language based on the lang attribute)?
>
> Tango has been doing for a couple of years. It has a notion of a
> preferential font, that is dynamically influenced by both the charset of
> the page and the lang attribute. Characters are looked up first in that
> font, then in all the others in order of their declaration in a
> configuration file.
>
> But the absence of such a feature is no reason not to use UTF-8 vs, say,
> Shift_JIS. If you pick Shift_JIS, you're restricted to Japanese
> characters, which will be displayed correctly. If you choose UTF-8, you
> can still have all Japanese chracaters display correctly, but you can also
> get other characters to display if you have a larger font or if your
> browser knows how to use multiple fonts (like Tango).
>
>
> >Currently, the "popular" browsers out there associate fonts with character
> >encodings, not languages.
>
> And most do not come configured for UTF-8 out of the box, which is the real
> show-stopper now for more widespread use of that charset.
>
>
> --
> François Yergeau
--
Thomas E. Dickey
address@hidden
http://www.clark.net/pub/dickey
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