[selowitch]

I am so annoyed with the incredibly uneven support for Unicode encodings in web browsers (UTF-8 and UTF-16). For example, I'm dying to use the full complement of fraction glyphs on my website that uses a lot of fractional measurements in inches.

Unfortunately, most of the fractions in this range simply don't display properly (2153-215F) even with the proper encoding. Most of us are stick with the entities 00BC (one-quarter), 00BD (one-half), and 00BE (one-third), and that's it.

Why can't the browsers just simply support Unicode fully? I realize it's a big job, but couldn't at least one major browser achieve this goal already?

[selowitch]

Originally posted by selowitch:
I am so annoyed with the incredibly uneven support for Unicode encodings in web browsers (UTF-8 and UTF-16). For example, I'm dying to use the full complement of fraction glyphs on my website that uses a lot of fractional measurements in inches.

Unfortunately, most of the fractions in this range simply don't display properly (2153-215F) even with the proper encoding. Most of us are stick with the entities 00BC (one-quarter), 00BD (one-half), and 00BE (one-third), and that's it.

Why can't the browsers just simply support Unicode fully? I realize it's a big job, but couldn't at least one major browser achieve this goal already?

** BUMP **

[Synotic]

Well what do you consider a major browser? I did a quick test and found that at least Safari and Mozilla-based browsers seem to display all the additional fractions correctly... ie:mac 5 and winie 6 only display 1/3, 2/3, 1/8, 3/8, 5/8, and 7/8 in the additional fractions. But it seems as if you've already came to this conclusion and that you really aren't asking a question but stating the facts. Unfortunately it just seems that IE browsers can't handle a number of characters in that range.

[selowitch]

Originally posted by Synotic:
Well what do you consider a major browser? I did a quick test and found that at least Safari and Mozilla-based browsers seem to display all the additional fractions correctly... ie:mac 5 and winie 6 only display 1/3, 2/3, 1/8, 3/8, 5/8, and 7/8 in the additional fractions. But it seems as if you've already came to this conclusion and that you really aren't asking a question but stating the facts. Unfortunately it just seems that IE browsers can't handle a number of characters in that range.

Yes, you're right, I was more stating lamentable facts than asking a question (I believe the technical term for that is whining). :-)

If you look closely at your test, however, you will discover that even those glyphs that one first glance appear to display "correctly" in fact are in different typefaces! And that can be corrected neither with CSS nor with the now-deprecated <font> tag.

Try blowing them up to a bigger size with either styles or the <font> tag and you'll see what I mean.

To me, it's just really asinine. I mean, is it to much to ask to be able to display typographically correct, proportional fractions of the same size, font, and weight of the surrounding text?

[cowerd]

Have you figured out if the fonts you are using have a full unicode character set?

[Simon Mundy]

Originally posted by selowitch:
Yes, you're right, I was more stating lamentable facts than asking a question (I believe the technical term for that is whining). :-)

If you look closely at your test, however, you will discover that even those glyphs that one first glance appear to display "correctly" in fact are in different typefaces! And that can be corrected neither with CSS nor with the now-deprecated <font> tag.

Try blowing them up to a bigger size with either styles or the <font> tag and you'll see what I mean.

To me, it's just really asinine. I mean, is it to much to ask to be able to display typographically correct, proportional fractions of the same size, font, and weight of the surrounding text?

I don't see it:-

[php]<p style="font-size: 102px; font-family: Verdana">1&frac14;</p>[/php]

[selowitch]

Originally posted by cowerd:
Have you figured out if the fonts you are using have a full unicode character set?

Excellent question. As a web developer, I'm trying to stick to those fonts that are 100% likely to be installed on a given client machine if possible (regardless of platform). Therefore, that limits me to fonts like Arial, Geneva, Times, Helvetica, Georgia, and the like. And no, none of those are fully Unicode-compliant.

Actually, finding any font that not only supports Unicode but also supports the Number Forms subsection of that standard is fiendishly difficult.

I don't want to use some commercial Unicode font for my sites because it won't work for most of my website's vistors.

However, if you look at full sample page of the fractions in that range you will see that they don't display properly: they are either garbage or some of them are in an odd font.

Here is a link to a sample page showing all the various fractions. Do you see how few of them show up in your browser?

[Simon Mundy]

Originally posted by selowitch:
Excellent question. As a web developer, I'm trying to stick to those fonts that are 100% likely to be installed on a given client machine if possible (regardless of platform). Therefore, that limits me to fonts like Arial, Geneva, Times, Helvetica, Georgia, and the like. And no, none of those are fully Unicode-compliant.

Actually, finding any font that not only supports Unicode but also supports the Number Forms subsection of that standard is fiendishly difficult.

I don't want to use some commercial Unicode font for my sites because it won't work for most of my website's vistors.

However, if you look at full sample page of the fractions in that range you will see that they don't display properly: they are either garbage or some of them are in an odd font.

Here is a link to a sample page showing all the various fractions. Do you see how few of them show up in your browser?

I'm not surprised - the 'raw' character codes can differ over platforms. It's a much safer bet to use the HTML entity equivalents, so the client browser can interpret these characters using the OS's native encoding scheme and map it to the appropriate glyphs. You can get that sort of trouble even using non-unicode characters like the 'curly' quotes in Mac or PC - the character codes are quite different.

[selowitch]

It's a much safer bet to use the HTML entity equivalents

Bizarre, because I've received the exact opposite advice from others, that the hexadecimal/decimal values are better than the HTML entities.

[selowitch]

** WARNING: RANT FOLLOWS **

I think it's lovely that Unicode seeks to incorporate every character of every language in the world encoded in such a way as it can be read in any browser. Obviously, the current version is very far from that goal, since it can't even display something as basic as a vulgar fraction without totally choking.

Why don't they delay incorporating one of the more obscure languages into Unicode and fix the major languages they already have?

I further can't believe that there's no way to display typographically correct fractions in ANY browser (except for half, third, and one-quarter) unless you do it as an image rather than as text. That is horrendous!