Display Problems?
If you are unable to read some Unicode characters in your
browser, it may be because your system is not properly configured.
Here are some basic instructions for doing that. There are two basic
steps:
- Install fonts that cover the characters you need
- Configure your browser to use them.
Ideally, you will install fonts that are tuned for the scripts
that you particularly need, then also install a full Unicode font as
a backup. The
Last Resort Font, a collection of last resort glyphs, for display when no other
appropriate font is available for displaying a Unicode character, is also available. The following
describes how to get fonts for different platforms: you can also find other fonts at
Useful Resources.
Windows
For Windows XP, getting additional languages installed is as follows:
Start > Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options and Language Options.
In the Languages tab, check the Supplemental language support option(s) you want. Setting both options will install all optional fonts. This adds fonts as well as system support for these languages.
For Windows 2000, getting additional languages installed is as follows:
Start > Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options.
In the General tab, set all the languages you may want to display, the more you set, the more you will be able to process multilingual data through all your applications, including your browser. This adds fonts as well as system support for these languages.
Full fonts:
If you have Microsoft Office 2000 and newer versions, you can get the Arial Unicode MS font, which is the most complete. To get it, insert the Office CD, and do a custom install. Choose Add or Remove Features. Click the (+) next to Office Tools, then International Support, then the Universal Font icon, and choose the installation option you want.
To set your tooltip font to be able to display Unicode
characters:
Right click on the desktop, pick
Properties>Appearance>Advanced>Item: ToolTip, then set the font to
Arial Unicode MS or other large font.
Macintosh
On Mac OS X, the Safari Web browser includes Unicode support and
OmniWeb directly supports Unicode drawing. OmniWeb, however, does
not currently provide support for all of Unicode. It can, however,
take advantage of Unicode fonts for Windows if properly installed.
There are currently no Web browsers which provide direct Unicode
drawing on the Mac OS 9.x or earlier. All the browsers use Apple
Language Kits and WorldScript to varying degrees to support Unicode
and international text.
Language Kits are installed using your Mac OS 9.x installation
CD. Launch the Mac OS Install application. Proceed through the
initial screens, selecting the appropriate boot disk. When you reach
the "Install Software" screen, click on the "Customize" button. This
opens up the Custom Installation and Removal dialog box.
Scroll down to "Language Kits." Click on the check box, and then
select "Customized Installation" from the installation popup to the
right. (It will say "None selected" at first.)
This brings up a dialog box with a list of all the available
language kits. Select the ones you want, or use the menu at the top
of the dialog box to select all of them. Proceed with the
installation.
If you already have Mac OS 9.0 installed, you will be asked if
you want to add or remove software after you select the installation
disk. Click on the "Add/Remove" button. This will bring you to the
Custom Installation and Removal dialog box.
The installation procedure is the same for Mac OS 8.6, except
that you will be installing "Multilingual Internet Access" instead
of Language Kits. For Mac OS 8.5.5 and earlier, it will be necessary
to purchase the individual language kits.
Unix
A range of quite comprehensive fixed-width Unicode on-screen
pixel fonts for X11/Unix users can be downloaded from
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html
or directly as
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/download/ucs-fonts.tar.gz
Check the included README file for detailed installation
instructions.
An earlier version of these fonts is already automatically
installed when you use the XFree86 4.0 X server, which is the one
commonly used under Linux.
The Firefox and
Netscape web browsers can make use
of these fonts directly and are highly recommended for anyone
interested in utilizing Unicode web pages (make sure to use the very
latest version though). Just select the "-misc-fixed-iso10646-1"
font for the "Unicode" category in the "Edit|Preferences|Fonts"
setup menu. The Netscape 4.x browsers cannot handle 16-bit Unicode
fonts at all. However, the above package contains scripts to
generate 8-bit fonts in all ISO 8859 variants, which Netscape 4.x
will then use to display those Unicode characters that are also
found in ISO 8859.
You should make sure that you are using the most recent version
of whatever browser you use, and have installed the fonts you want.
The following then describes how to configure browsers for different
fonts.
Internet Explorer
IE is fairly smart about picking tuned fonts for different
characters. To set your font as the default for a given block of
characters, choose Tools > Internet Options > Fonts, then select the
fonts.
Monospace Fonts:
IE uses Web page font to mean variable-width,
and Plain text font to mean fixed width. Unfortunately, IE will not
let you pick a variable-width font in the Plain text font box. That
means in practice that you simply can't view most Unicode characters
in fixed-width.
Netscape Navigator / Firefox
You will need to tell NN which fonts to use for which encodings.
To set your font as the default for a given block of characters,
choose Edit > Preferences > Fonts. Then for each encoding you are
likely to use, pick the appropriate fonts for the Variable Width and
Fixed Width fonts. It is particularly important to set default fonts
for Unicode. These fonts will be used when NN encounters documents
encoded in a Unicode variant.
Monospace Fonts:
NN lets you select any font for fixed-width
content. This allows you to use a variable-width font in the Fixed
Width box. While you lose the alignment of the characters, at least
you can read the content.
To allow Java applets (and/or programs) to draw Unicode characters in the fonts you have available, you will need to hand-edit the font configuration files that the Java runtime uses.
Because you may have several Java runtimes installed on your machine (for different browsers, development environments, etc.), you may need to do this multiple times.
The process is described in Java's documentation and depends on the version:
The following link from
Alan Wood’s
Unicode Resources also offers helpful information on specific
topics.
For setting up browsers on different operating systems for
Multilingual and Unicode Support:
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/browsers.html
![[Unicode]](http://www.unicode.org/webscripts/logo60s2.gif){kind=small}
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