RE: Major site in unicode?

From: Chris Wendt (christw@microsoft.com)
Date: Sat Sep 30 2000 - 17:40:16 EDT


From: George Zeigler [mailto:genz1968@mtu-net.ru]
>Anyone know of a major site out there that uses only unicode.
>Actually, any decent business site.

Try http://calendar.msn.com for a site exclusively in Unicode.
But: running a site which is based on Unicode and does practically
everything in Unicode doesn't mean that every single HTML page generated by
it is in Unicode. Try all of the pages linked from
http://search.msn.com/worldwide.asp. All the pages linked from here are
served up by a single site. Wouldn't be possible (well, much harder at
least) if the database back end holding the web directory and web site
descriptions and the rest of the infrastructure running MSN Search were not
in Unicode.

>Unicode seems useful only for those working with ancient or
>non-major languages or for those working with multiple languages in the
same
>spreadsheet/document.

... or are operating web sites hosting content in multiple languages.
For a site which is interested only in catering to Russian speaking users or
the set of languages whose characters can be represented in windows-1252 or
koi-r, indeed it is fine to run in windows-1252 or koi-r exclusively. Just
don't expect to extend your site at any point to users who speak languages
not representable in windows-1252/koi8-r.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:14 EDT