was this from www-style..or www-html?

Geoff Narvronsen (geoffryn@nfocus.com)
Tue, 16 Jan 1996 16:55:03 -0600

>On Mon, 15 Jan 1996 15:39:13 -0500 (EST), murray@sq.com wrote:
>
>>Frederic Naud asks:
>>> I would appreciate if someone could tell me what is currently the
>>> norm for internatinal chars. on the WWW. Do we still have to type the codes
>>> (é for an =E9) or can we type the character in the HTML file.
>>> With all the browsers I tried, the é is useless since the software
>>> recognised the characters (=E9).
>>>
>>The é is not useless, it is simply redundant if you have
>>the ability to enter the character directly. The use of named
>>character entity is for those who do not have the ability to
>>key the character.
>
>I don't believe that is accurate. As the quoted post from Frederic
>shows, simply entering the character (if you can key it) doesn't allow
>for the character to be remapped if needed. The notation (é) is
>a unique character name, which may or may not be the equivalent
>character in ASCII.

right..it's really best to use the é code, to ensure
viewability..because if you go into DosEDIT and punch in the character with
the ALT-(ASCII value) combination when you're writing the page, it's not
going to look the same on any other platform..

if this makes no sense, let me put it this way..if you go into DosEDIT and
type "ALT-255", the character that you want will be on the screen..and you
save the .txt or .htm file, and it's all dandy..but if you try viewing that
same text file on any other machine, you'll see a different character (i'm
not sure what that is on a PC, but on a mac, it comes out as a little
backwards comma thing, on an amiga, you'll see a vertical line, and i have
no idea what unix would show it as)..this also happens when you view it on
a browser..so while anyone on a Windows, OS/2, or DOS-based browser will
see what you intended, nobody else would..

but if you use the code, then the browser will convert it into whatever the
equivalent ASCII value is..at least, it will if it understands the codes,
and it really ought to..

>Frederic, could you point us to a demo page where you have used -both-
>notation styles? I think we're looking at a quirk of trying to be both
>international and platform independent.

you can't be both..you have to chose..and since everyone's already decided
to use ISO instead of PC ASCII, i would give up any plans of revolution..

(whew)
GeoffryN