LL-L "Resources" 2002.02.04 (10) [E]
Lowlands-L
sassisch at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 5 01:10:05 UTC 2002
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L O W L A N D S - L * 04.FEB.2002 (10) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
Web Site: <http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/lowlands/>
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Archive: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html>
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: Andy.Eagle at t-online.de (Andy Eagle)
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2002.02.04 (01) [E]
Ron Wrote:
<snip>
> Before I installed the Lucida font, I designated the view mode to use MS
> Arial Unicode (in IE 5+), which I did have. It worked for various pages
> but not for yours for some reason.
The reason that MS Arial Unicode didn't work in my pages was because the
font MS Arial Unicode wasn't defined in my style sheet. It is now so it
should work. That's one of the advantage of (external) style sheets,
adding
the three words 'MS Arial Unicode' in the style sheet causes it to apply
to
the whole site.I dont need to edit any of the pages. (I'll not go into
the
nitty gritty here it would take to long.)
Andy Eagle
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From: Andy.Eagle at t-online.de (Andy Eagle)
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2002.02.04 (06) [E]
Ron Wrote
<snip>
> The thing about using either Unicode font on web pages is that
> apparently you need cascading style sheets, and that's my next
> challenge.
You can achieve 'mimimal' results without stylesheets simply use
<font face="Lucida Sans Unicode">ɑ ɔ ə</font> (type the
code
for the desired character)
You can of course choose other fonts but the user has to have the chosen
font installed on their system for the unicode to work.
The following fonts have IPA Extensions. (What thay have above and
beyond
that varies considerably)
Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Sans, Arial Unicode MS, Bitstream CyberBit,
Bitstream CyberCJK, Caslon, Code2000, Monospace, Thryomanes, TITUS
Cyberbit
Basic, SImPL, MS Mincho
More Info at: http://www.hclrss.demon.co.uk/unicode/fonts.html
The reason I chose Lucida Sans Unicode was simply because a free
download
was available.
With style sheets you can define more than one font. The users' machine
checks for the first font, if its not there it checks for the second and
so
on.
Style sheets aren't difficult, have fun!
Andy
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From: "Nigel Smith" <rnigelsmith at hotmail.com>
Subject: Resources
R. F. Hahn wrote:
>Before I installed the Lucida font, I designated the view mode to use MS
>Arial Unicode (in IE 5+), which I did have. It worked for various pages
>but not for yours for some reason.
This is persumably because there is a minor typo ("Unnicode" for
"Unicode")
in Andy Eagle's style sheet.
It is probably best to define the font in the style sheet as
FONT-FAMILY:
Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Code 2000 (rather than putting
Lucida
Sans Unicode first). The browser will display your text in the first
listed
font that is installed on the user's machine. As Arial Unicode MS is
optimised for onscreen display, it is probably a better choice than
Lucida
Sans, which looks 'jagged'/jaggy on screen. If the user doesn't have
Arial
Unicode MS installed, the text will be displayed in the next font in the
list.
It is good to see that Unicode is finally becoming available for general
use
on web pages.
Nigel Smith
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Resources"
> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Resources
>
> The thing about using either Unicode font on web pages is that
> apparently you need cascading style sheets, and that's my next
> challenge.
I don't think you actually need them for Unicode, but Cascading
Style Sheets are advisable anyway - certainly they ease the
handling of any kind of layout, and this is very helpful with
fragmented Unicode strings such as on my and Andy's pages, which
otherwise would require unweildy FONT statements everywhere.
Although this may be getting off topic, I feel I really should
say a few words about my frustrating experiences learning CSS.
CSS are great - but not if you approach them the way I did!
Many others have also found CSS frustrating and given up. In
fact they're very powerful, accurate and flexible and in the
long run will save you a lot of work. The syntax is also very
simple and the keywords easy to remember.
I started learning CSS from books, and since IE is by far the
most popular browser, many books tend to concentrate on features
that work well with IE. This is unfortunate because IE has some
of the worst CSS bugs.
Thus I started CSS development of the current ScotsteXt site
using IE and following the book, and at an advanced stage tested
it with NS and Opera and discovered that I just couldn't get it
to work in those browsers. Fooled into thinking that those browsers
were the buggy ones, I had to put the site up with alternative
layouts for them.
Since then I've learned about CSS online, and there are some
sites which explain properly what's going on. By the time it
came to developing the stylesheet for my grammar site I had
found out that in fact IE is buggy, but if you learn with IE
you tend to compensate for the bugs and learn everything all
wrong!
I found that the best path is to develop with Opera, then your
site will almost certainly work with IE and Netscape. Conversely,
I've found from experience that if you develop with IE, it may
not work in NS, and even when you get it working in NS, it may
not work in Opera! It can seem as if Opera is the most buggy,
but in fact the opposite is true.
My grammar pages are now true cross-browser (no browser specific
code), and in spite of the preliminary problems, I now wouldn't
use any other method for laying out web pages (until decent
XML capabilities become widespread!).
As for where to find out about Cascading Style Sheets online,
you may find it difficult to find the best sites at first, as
they tend to be private affairs by people who revel in cryptic
URLs. I would recommend starting at either of the following two
sites and reading all the articles and opinion essays, studying
the examples, following all the links, and finally downloading
any "steal me" stylesheets to begin practising with. They're
quite fun and interesting (and no, I'm not affiliated with them
in any way!):
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/ (click on "box lesson")
http://www.glish.com/ (the site is valuable but the links even more so)
I hope this will save some Lowlanders much of the frustration
I went through over the past summer (and that's as close as I
can bring this topic to a true "Lowlandic connection"!).
Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
- C.W.Wade,
'The Adventures o McNab'
----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Resources
Thanks, Andy, Nigel and Sandy! This was very helpful. It is great to
have you guys in the wings to hold our little hands once in a while.
Few things are really as hard as they first seem, especially if you're
on a mission and *need* to learn it.
Nigel, I totally agree with you about Lucida Sans Unicode and about the
availability and use of Unicode. It will be very useful for all of us
who deal with language. Let's see how long it will take for everyone to
be able to read and use it, including in email, such as on this list.
Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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