[Sca-cooks] handling diacritical marks

[Stefan li Rous]

Katherine asked:
<<< Just a question to you and the list in
general about diacritical marks (i.e. umlauts etc.).  I can code the  
keys
to display the marks, but it looks like my email program and some of the
list's email reader programs may strip them and replace them with  
question
marks and other random assorted characters.>>>

The web is gradually learning to handle these funny characters.  
Unfortunately, it is still done rather hit and miss. Even if the email  
programs allow it and handle things without losing characters, does  
the digest? I don't think so. I get this list in digest form.

Microsoft Word will substitute some special characters with their  
specific HTML encodings when you write in an HTML format. But, for  
some reason, it doesn't translate all of them. And it won't translate  
single character fractions or it's *own* special single and double  
quotes to the correct HTML codes. This has been and continues to be a  
problem in my translating email messages into readable HTML files.  
Grrrr.

<<< Has the list had a discussion about this? Was there consensus?  If  
not,
what is the feeling now between the 3 options I see - umlaut with
characters and hope that ?'s won't replace them, use the sideways
diacritical indicator of the colon, or just leave 'em off? >>>

For someone submitting an article directly to me for publication in  
the Florilegium, go ahead and use the special characters. While my  
program to fix Word's bad HTML still doesn't know about them and will  
miss the ones Word doesn't translate into HTML characters, I do always  
include the Word or RTF formatted version online in the Florilegium so  
that is available. Hopefully in the future, if I continue with this  
process, I will add the intelligence to my Python program to fix  
Word's mistakes.

I still have a problem that an HTML file with special characters will  
look wonderful on my monitor screen, but once it gets uploaded to the  
Florilegium site, some of the perfectly fine special characters are  
unreadable. Probably something on the website, but I've yet to find it.

For email messages, I'd prefer to see the regular characters without  
the accents, umlats etc. I think it should still be obvious what is  
meant and it should be clearer and easier to read than with characters  
replaced with question marks.

Others are likely to have differing opinions but I am constrained as  
others may not be, by trying to get readable text that I can use in  
the Florilegium in a very much "most common situation". I can't count  
on my readers having a particular character set installed or running a  
particular operating system or browser.

Stefan

--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****