Re: Unicode HTML, download

From: Edward H. Trager (ehtrager@umich.edu)
Date: Sat Nov 20 2004 - 18:05:36 CST

  • Next message: E. Keown: "Re: Unicode HTML, download"

    Hi, Elaine,

    There is of course no limit to how many writing systems
    one can have on a Unicode-encoded HTML page.

    My recommendations would be to:

     (1) Use XHTML, i.e., the top of your document would
         look something like this:

         <!DOCTYPE html
           PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
         <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
         ...etc...

     (2) Encode the page using UTF-8. Good Unicode editors will
         allow you to save the page in UTF-8. In the <head> section
         of the HTML you would then have something like this:

         <head>
           <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
         ...etc...

     (3) Use Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) classes to control display of fonts
         and, in the case of Hebrew, to enforce paragraph and text alignment
         policies for Right-to-left languages. For example, in your CSS file,
         you might have (and this is just a very simple example):

           .semitic{
                direction:rtl;
           }

        ... and then in your XHTML file, you can now have things like this:

        <p class="semitic">
         עברית
        </p>

        A better CSS class would additionally specify the font-family,
        for example, something like the SIL Ezra font
        (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=EzraSIL_Home

     (4) Since your readers may not have certain fonts, In the case of legally
         downloadable fonts like SIL Ezra, I would definitely put a link to the
         download site so readers can download the (Hebrew) fonts if they need it to view
         your page.

    If you have any additional questions regarding these suggestions, write to me
    off the list.

    -- Ed Trager

    On Friday 2004.11.19 10:36:44 -0800, E. Keown wrote:
    > Elaine Keown
    > Seattle
    >
    > Hi,
    >
    > I'm about to HTML a lovely bilingual character set
    > glossary and translate it into Modern Hebrew and
    > (maybe) Basic English.
    >
    > I'll end up with vertical columns of English, French,
    > Modern Hebrew, and (probably) Basic English.
    >
    > If I add the proper Unicode-related HTML code at the
    > top, will people get Unicode-compatible text when
    > they download this?
    >
    > When finished, I think this will be useful
    > immediately, since there is apparently no online
    > Hebrew character set glossary.
    >
    > Is there a limit to how many separate writing systems
    > one can do this way? ---Thanks, Elaine
    >
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