Shoutout for a Unicode Converter

July 14, 2004 1:33 AM

dorian solved a perrenial MetaFilter problem. Perhaps this could be linked on the post-writing screen?
posted by Pretty_Generic to Feature Requests at 1:33 AM (26 comments total)

Of more help to many would be a site where they could look up HTML entities that they would like to use, but otherwise don't know how to access. Here's the reference I use:

http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/

As one uses the named entities, one will remember them. Less likely the hex codes. Finally, most browsers are far more likely to support the named entities than they are any arbitrary hex code.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:35 AM on July 14, 2004

Seems to me the chief issue is that most people who want to can produce the Unicode pretty easily, and they assume that it will remain after preview. This method allows just a simple bit of copy-and-paste as a workaround.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:02 AM on July 14, 2004

Yeah, but you can do that by copying before you hit preview. If all looks well, then paste and replace. Or just hit the back button and copy and then forward again and paste.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 3:06 AM on July 14, 2004

∇
posted by hama7 at 6:29 AM on July 14, 2004

Actually, browsers are more likely to support the numbered entities rather than the named ones. It sucks, because — (—) is more widely supported than — as not every browser has a full internal listing for all of the named character entities. And — is one of the most commonly used entities, so the likelihood of other less common entities working in all browsers is low.
posted by Khalad at 6:52 AM on July 14, 2004

Khalad: thanks for the correction. I made a bad assumptiopn, didn't I? Stupid browser developers. *grumble*

̓Απολιθώσεις δ' εἰσὶ διτταί: [3] ἡ μὲν του̂ νοητικου̂ ἀπολίθωσις, ἡ δὲ του̂ ἐντρεπτικου̂, ὅταν τις παρατεταγμένος ᾐ̂ μὴ ἐπινεύειν τοι̂ς ἐναργέσι μηδ' ἀπὸ τω̂ν μαχομένων ἀφίστασθαι. [4] οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τὴν μὲν σωματικὴν ἀπονέκρωσιν φοβούμεθα καὶ πάντ' ἂν μηχανησαίμεθα ὑπὲρ του̂ μὴ περιπεσει̂ν τοιούτῳ τινί, τη̂ς ψυχη̂ς δ' ἀπονεκρουμένης οὐδὲν ἡμι̂ν μέλει. [5] καὶ νὴ Δία ἐπὶ αὐτη̂ς τη̂ς ψυχη̂ς ἂν μὲν ᾐ̂ οὕτως διακείμενος, ὥστε μηδενὶ παρακολουθει̂ν μηδὲ συνιέναι μηδέν, καὶ του̂τον κακω̂ς ἔχειν οἰόμεθα: ἂν δέ τινος τὸ ἐντρεπτικὸν καὶ αἰδη̂μον ἀπονεκρωθῃ̂, του̂το ἔτι καὶ δύναμιν καλου̂μεν. —Epictetus, Works, Book I, Chapter 5, Paragraph 2

posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:08 AM on July 14, 2004

Much of that is Greek to me, the remainder is small rectangles to me. But then, I am running Win95.

Hooray for Win95.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:13 AM on July 14, 2004

There aren't many unicode typefaces that include all the Greek diacriticals. There aren't, in fact, that many very inclusive unicode typefaces. Arial Unicode MS, which comes with Office I think, is the most inclusive unicode typeface that is highly available to most Windows users. I don't like it very much. I really like Georgia, but I don't have a big ole' unicode version of it.

A highly inclusive typeface is Code2000, but it is butt-ugly.

Matt uses Tahoma as his default typeface here at MeFi, and it'd be nice to have a big unicode version of it. Do any of you type freaks out there have any suggestions?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:22 AM on July 14, 2004

Oh, I see that Windows XP Tahoma does have those diacriticals. I guess I'll leave MeFi set to use Tahoma then. But Tahoma is sorta ugly, especially anything italicized.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:25 AM on July 14, 2004

You call this ugly?
posted by kaibutsu at 9:31 AM on July 14, 2004

I'm pretty sure it's Verdana by default here, actually, not Tahoma. Tahoma is the Windows XP/Office 2000+ menu font.

Of course, I have my typeface set to Georgia in the preferences anyway.
posted by reklaw at 2:20 PM on July 14, 2004

" But then, I am running Win95."

So *you're* the guy running Win95.
posted by y6y6y6 at 2:41 PM on July 14, 2004

/wanders into meta, sees name. tf?!

nah, I didn't solve nothin, major balance of credit to bobo123 and planetkyoto for presenting hints (if not outright smacks to the brain) in various past meta posts, I'm just a lazy git who came across an easy way to get hex unicode instead of decimal unicode.

also, I don't think there are named entities for big5/gb/jis/arabic/etc., much less ones I could actually remember ^_^

and yeah, I think you still do need to re-paste-after-preview, which I'd not mentioned.

metafilter: much of that is small rectangles to me.
posted by dorian at 6:49 PM on July 14, 2004

also, at work we use – and — for endash and emdash... which is so very, very wrong.
posted by dorian at 6:51 PM on July 14, 2004

It's definitely not Tahoma here. I get enough of that crap from the designers at work. 'Sides, Trebuchet is the new Tahoma.
posted by yerfatma at 7:29 PM on July 14, 2004

You're right. My mistake.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:59 PM on July 14, 2004

vera is the new verdana.

(I think) it looks good, it's free, and it rendered ever' single one of those greek characters.
posted by dorian at 8:33 PM on July 14, 2004

O yeah, gentium is another very decent free unicode ttf that has superb greek support.
posted by dorian at 8:42 PM on July 14, 2004

I used to love Tahoma, years back, for webapp interface design stuff I was doing.

I got better.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:16 PM on July 14, 2004

khalad & dorian - &#x2014??? WTF? &#151? wrong indeed!

just do &#8212. same character (—). what's with the x2014?

but then i'm picky about the html encoding i use. dislike (strongly!) using the deprecated "small" tag to make tinier text, rather than using relative font sizing CSS.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:32 AM on July 15, 2004

8212₁₀ = 2014₁₆
posted by DrJohnEvans at 12:23 PM on July 16, 2004

Hi kids, long time. Just thought I'd post so nobody takes away my user number, and to point out that the small tag is not deprecated in any dialect of HTML or XHTML.
Hi iconomy!
posted by rodii at 5:31 PM on July 16, 2004

rodii's back!

*uses small tag happily*
posted by languagehat at 4:13 PM on July 18, 2004

Hi rodii! HI RODII!!
posted by Lynsey at 11:06 AM on July 21, 2004

Hey, yeah! Hi rodii! (Quick, where did we stash his Lifetime Achievement award?)
posted by rory at 5:02 AM on July 22, 2004

Shane! Shane! Come back Shane!
posted by jpoulos at 1:09 PM on July 23, 2004