Punctuation transcription

If you would provide a url it would be a lot easier to help. But this note should cover the possible issues, either your ftp settings or a server problem:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/iwebchars.html

This is related to the font that you're using - some fonts do not properly handle all characters when used on the Net.

This is related to the font that you're using - some
fonts do not properly handle all characters when used
on the Net.

That's not at all likely. Question marks are caused by the wrong settings on your FTP program.

Gene Deal sent me about two pages worth of documentation on this very issue this morning. It was indeed a font issue. You can find a number of instances right here in these forums regarding the encoding of the Dakota font also - doesn't support many characters for other languages. It's entirely likely.

Gene Deal sent me about two pages worth of
documentation on this very issue this morning. It was
indeed a font issue.

I would really like to see this, if possible. You can get my email address by clicking on my name. Is Gene Deal the person who posted the query in this thread?

You can find a number of
instances right here in these forums regarding the
encoding of the Dakota font also - doesn't support
many characters for other languages.

The Dakota Handwriting font is encoded incorrectly for some characters, and I have a fixed version for those who need it. But errors cause by it are obvious when you type -- they don't just appear as question marks after uploading.

I'm not sure which forums he's coming off of - this was a set of personal messages between a number of us, not forum threads. The crux of his findings were this:

"Some of the characters were caused by not using a 'good' web font. I found that the use of a Times New Roman font at 16pts eliminated some of the problems. I also noticed that a double space between sentences would introduce the culprits as well..."

He too had no problems on-screen, and only saw the issues after the site had been published. He never said which font WAS causing the problem however.

Not sure this will show up once I post this note, but this is what he got after publishing:

1. •   Ads in local newspapers
2. •   Mailing list kept by A1 Estate Services
3. •   Listing your estate sale on our website
4. •   Telephone and email reminders to select dealers

1. •   Ads in local newspapers
2. •   Mailing list kept by A1 Estate Services
3. •   Listing your estate sale on our website
4. •   Telephone and email reminders to select
dealers

Do you have the url of his site? Problems with characters like that are normally caused by the server forcing the encoding into Latin-1, instead of the UTF-8 required by iWeb. The characters should go away if you go to View > Text Encoding and choose UTF-8. The fix is to add an .htaccess file to your server space to set the server encoding correctly. If this is done it should not matter what normal Mac or Windows font you use (except for Handwriting Dakota, which is another issue).

I'd like to verify this if possible, since I keep the note mentioned earlier on fixing problems with characters in published pages, and I want it to be accurate. So far fonts have never been an issue.

Okay let me see if he every included his link... one sec...

Yes, here it is and he apparently hasn't fixed that problem I posted yet so you can see it in action.

http://www.xmission.com/~a1estateservices/Home.html

I did change the encoding in my browser and it did work - it changes the characters to bullets.

I don't think he frequents these forums, but I'll pass that on to him and see if that clears up any of the lingering issues he was seeing.

Yes, I looked and it is the case of the server forcing the browser to use Latin-1 encoding, thus botching the non-ascii characters on the site done in UTF-8. If you pass him my note

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/iwebchars.html

there are some details on the .htaccess file which may be helpful to him.

Tom, Suzanne, et.al.

I have a document posted (quick & dirty) that describes the solutions to all the problems I encountered. While this may have some aspects of encoding issues everything is resolveable with the usual iWeb tweaking.

The file can be down loaded at:

http://homepage.mac.com/gene.deal/FileSharing3.html

Happy hacking... debugging?

Ah, you are here! I'll have to read your doc and post a link to you now that you're a veteran iWeb hacker 😀

As you can see I've around for a while, but since iWeb I am definitely involved now. I've been a member of the Apple Development Group for a while now and take an interest in many things computer. By profession I am a computational linguist and I still do this stuff for fun!

I meant to ask, how in the world are you processing all the requiests you must be getting for template help?

I'm checking out the wordsmith 'stuff' for my site. I may have a simple one up tonight.

I have a document posted (quick & dirty) that
describes the solutions to all the problems I
encountered. While this may have some aspects of
encoding issues everything is resolveable with the
usual iWeb tweaking.

I think all your problems are resolveable by simply stopping the server from forcing the wrong encoding on your site. If this is done, none of the tweaking is necessary. This is easy to test -- you just go to View > Text Encoding on your browser and select UTF-8 (which is what all iWeb pages are supposed to be), and see if the problems disappear.

There is nothing wrong with the way iWeb produces its pages. Many others have had similar character issues and solved them with the encoding fix.