Unicode & UTF-8 support problems?

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Level 2

156 points

Unicode & UTF-8 support problems?

I'm trying to view fonts from a website but all I get are diamonds with question marks. The site webmaster is not familiar with Mac/Safari/OSX, but informed me that the text is a unicode font and that I should select UTF-8 in Safari > View > Text encoding. However that does not resolve the problem. Does anyone know what font code I need to have installed in order to view these pages?

sacred-texts.com website

example of what I'm seeing

running Safari 2.0.3

PowerBook g4 800m-p/1g-r/40g-hd & PowerMac g4 d450m-p/512m-r/160g-hd, Mac OS X (10.4.5), Resurrected iBook g3 600m-p/20g-hd/640m-r

Posted on Apr 21, 2006 5:41 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Ferd II

Level 10

104,761 points

Apr 21, 2006 7:41 PM in response to Leaf Roller

Leaf Roller,

Give the Webmaster the W3C Markup Validation Service link which says:

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 20-44 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.

;~)

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 21, 2006 8:22 PM in response to Leaf Roller

The site webmaster
is not familiar with Mac/Safari/OSX, but informed me
that the text is a unicode font and that I should
select UTF-8 in Safari > View > Text encoding.
However that does not resolve the problem. Does
anyone know what font code I need to have installed
in order to view these pages?

No code will work, as those files are all corrupted. It is hard to believe that the webmaster does not understand this. Instead use a place where they know what they are doing, like

http://bibledatabase.net/html/stephanos_1550/index.html

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0155:book=Ma tthew:chapter=1:verse=1

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Answer 3

Leaf Roller Author

Level 2

156 points

Apr 21, 2006 8:24 PM in response to Ferd II

I'm sorry - do you mean just email him the link that you provided? What would this do for him?

Thanks

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 21, 2006 8:31 PM in response to Leaf Roller

I'm sorry - do you mean just email him the link that
you provided? What would this do for him?

Hopefully it would wake him up to the fact that his greek bible text is corrupt and nobody can use it.

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Answer 5

Leaf Roller Author

Level 2

156 points

Apr 21, 2006 8:42 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

I will check out those site that you've recommended but the problem exists for all Greek fonts on this website from what i can tell. How do you know, or how can you tell that the files are corrupted? So that I can explain this to him.

thanks

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Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 21, 2006 9:16 PM in response to Leaf Roller

How do you know, or how
can you tell that the files are corrupted? So that I
can explain this to him.

I know they are corrupt because that link to the validator says the page is not valid UTF-8, and because my browser (and that of everyone else in the world, I can assure you) sees garbage or missing characters instead of Greek in various places there. He must see this as well, but he may know zero about Greek and think it is OK. It may not be worth much of your time to try and educate him -- maybe better to just use another site.

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Answer 7

Leaf Roller Author

Level 2

156 points

Apr 22, 2006 3:04 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

He says he's able to view them just fine when using Internet Explorer. He also says that he's using an off the shelf UTF-8 algorithm.

He's being cool about it and wants to resolve the issue but doesn't know what to do about it.

Thanks

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 22, 2006 6:46 AM in response to Leaf Roller

He says he's able to view them just fine when using
Internet Explorer. He also says that he's using an
off the shelf UTF-8 algorithm.

He's being cool about it and wants to resolve the
issue but doesn't know what to do about it.

Thanks! I've written him myself and asked for a screenshot of what he sees in his browser. If he sends that, I can hopefully explain what is wrong.

Did you try the other sites I mentioned and were you able to view the Greek correctly?

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Answer 9

Leaf Roller Author

Level 2

156 points

Apr 22, 2006 3:57 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Yes I tried th other sites and I'm able to view them all just fine. Did you ever hear back from the webmaster? I rec'd an email from him saying that he reverted back to character entities. And now I'm able to view it just fine. There are other location at the website that also use Greek letters, other than the NT links, which have not been reverted back to character entities. I'm going to check those with a Windows PC tonight just to prove it to myself. I've already tried Mozilla, FireFox, Netscape, Safari, Opera, & OmniWeb and they all got the corrupted files. I don't think I'll see anything different but I just want to see if it was actually ever checked.

Thanks for the help!

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Answer 10

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 22, 2006 4:10 PM in response to Leaf Roller

Did you ever hear back from the
webmaster?

Yes, we had a number of emails back and forth and, as you see, he has fixed the NT pages. I suspect he will fix the others the same way eventually. I did try WinXP/IE to view the pages myself before they were fixed and got the same result as with a Mac.

I am still mystified as to how the webmaster could have gotten the text to display correctly at his end, unless he did not notice missing Greek characters (some browsers, including Panther Safari, just ignore corrupt text instead of showing question marks, so if you don't actually know Greek you might not notice anything wrong). Or if he was viewing a different text.

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Answer 11

Leaf Roller Author

Level 2

156 points

Apr 22, 2006 5:50 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

It is weird why he was able to view it correctly. I checked using WinXP/IE & WinXP/Netscape and got the boxes on both. Both browsers had unicode UTF-8 as an option but the downloading of Code2000 as suggested on the website did not work out. So I do not know if that had something to do with it.

The thing is this website sells CD-ROMS containing the texts and I wonder if the corrupted files are on the CD-ROMS they're selling.

just checked back using WinXP/IE and am still getting the boxes even though he's fixed them. So I don't know if my test was any good using WinXP.

Thanks

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Answer 12

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 22, 2006 6:25 PM in response to Leaf Roller

It is weird why he was able to view it correctly. I
checked using WinXP/IE & WinXP/Netscape and got the
boxes on both. Both browsers had unicode UTF-8 as an
option but the downloading of Code2000 as suggested
on the website
did not work out. So I do not know if that had
something to do with it.

Yes, the font could matter, because you need one that has the Greek extended chars. I have all that stuff with my WinXP and will check later that the new version works.

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Answer 13

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 23, 2006 7:18 AM in response to Leaf Roller

PS In further experiments I have found the my Win IE 6 will in fact display these Greek pages correctly even though the UTF-8 seems to be clearly wrong. So the webmaster may well not be able to see the problem if using that app. How this could happen is a total mystery. Further research needed.

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Answer 14

Leaf Roller Author

Level 2

156 points

Apr 23, 2006 9:16 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I just want to verify that you tested the Septuagint Greek text. It looks like all the NT Greek Text has been reverted back to character entities.

Have you been able to download the Code 2000 using IE 5? (I've not been able to succesfully do so)

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Answer 15

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,252 points

Apr 23, 2006 10:28 AM in response to Leaf Roller

I just want to verify that you tested the Septuagint Greek text.

Yes, I was testing both the Sept. Greek text and an old version of the NT text which I had downloaded before it was changed to NCR's.

Have you been able to download the Code 2000 using IE
5? (I've not been able to succesfully do so)

Yes, I've had a copy for a long time and could mail it to you if you want.

I have asked around and think I may have the answer to the mystery, namely that the UTF-8 in the texts is in fact wrong, but WinIE does not check it for validity and the mistakes do not destroy Win IE's ability to display the right character.

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