Re: OT: Question: Unicode

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark J. Reed
Sent: 5/18/2003 1:39:39 PM
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Subject: Re: Question: Unicode

> If you include any characters whose numbers are above 255, you
> technically need to declare the file to be Unicode of some variety.
> If you don't, the browser isn't required to honor higher-numbered
> entities.
Not true. HTML's base charset is Unicode, no matter what the encoding
of the text file. Netscape 4 might not handle them, but Netscape 4 is
fundamentally broken in enough ways that you probably ought to just
write it off.

> The characters in the 128-255 range are encoded differently, so
> normal one-byte text which uses them is not compatible with UTF-8.
> That's why you have to use HTML entities for them in UTF-8 text.
Only, of course, if you aren't already encoding them in UTF-8.