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Subject:Re: HTML, ASCII, and Homesite From:"Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 4 Jan 1999 15:20:23 -0700
Generally good information snipped
>4. Different computer platforms and operating systems map high-ASCII
>characters differently. Just because an em dash is 151 on a Windows machine
>doesn't mean it's 151 everywhere else. Using an entity name rather than a
>number lets a browser interpret a character for its particular platform.
But the numbers are NOT Windows/ANSI values--they're the normative
values in the spec. If you use £ for a pound sterling symbol,
it'll be recognized far more widely than £, and it won't vary
based on the platform of the browser at all.
>>Several PCs display "$mdash;" instead of the actual em dash.
>>Anyone know why? I think those PCs are using IE 3 and I'm
>>using the latest version of IE 4. Is this display problem an
>>IE 3 thing?
>
>It's an IE3 thing. Simply put, IE3 is too old to recognize the —
>entity, so it renders it as a literal. (Lots of browsers do this; it's a
>pity developers don't make them simply ignore unknown entities, the way they
>do unknown tags. Then again, it might carry valuable information and the
>reader might understand it anyway.)
>
>The — and dozens of other entities came into being very recently, and
>generally browser recognition of them is very poor.
And that's why you're generally better off with the numeric entities,
if you must use them at all.
>>How am I supposed to make pages
>>that are multiple-browser-friendly when I can't even get a
>>consistent display in a company where everyone has the
>>same browser (albeit different versions)???
Welcome to the world of HTML.
>For example, if you used the reference for HTML 3.2 and coded all your Web
>pages to comply with that version of the HTML standard, you should have no
>problems with incompatibilities between IE3 and 4.
But you should also check out your audience--make sure that
they'll be with IE3 for a while. If your audience ends up standardized
on IE4, you have a lot of extra options available to you that will
make your life easier. (Stylesheets, for one.)
Eric
Shameless Plug: Our _Mastering HTML 4_ book covers
these entities and cross-platform issues, as well as some
advice about figuring out what "flavor" of HTML code
you should use. It's currently available through Amazon,
and will also be out in a new edition in a couple of months.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Eric J. Ray RayComm, Inc. http://www.raycomm.com/ ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com
*Award-winning author of several popular computer books
*Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
*Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_
