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Subject:Re: HTML, ASCII, and Homesite From:"Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 4 Jan 1999 15:43:02 -0700
>>>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.
>
>Erm. 151, however, is undefined in HTML - on a Windows browser that uses
>Windows character mapping instead of ISO-Latin or Unicode, you may well get
>an m-dash, but it's by no means guaranteed. The correct numeric entity for
>an m-dash is — - however, as I think someone else pointed out,
>support for Unicode entities (the ones with large numeric representations)
>is pretty recent and still very spotty.
Sigh. That's what I get for not looking up that particular character.
I'll stand by my statement that the _defined_ HTML entities are browser
and platform independent, though.
>The bottom line is that it's not a good idea yet to use m- and n-dashes in
>HTML if you're concerned about compatibility - there's just no good,
>well-supported method available as yet. Ugly as it may be, the single or
>double dash will serve you better.
And test, test, test.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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_
