Chinese character test

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Mar 3 02:04:11 UTC 2008


At 8:48 PM -0500 3/2/08, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>I'm pretty sure it does, but I don't know much beyond that.  It does
>>seem as though Eudora's not the culprit.
>I think Eudora is probably deficient. At least it seems to be 'common
>knowledge' on the Web that Eudora is unaware of Unicode; I used Eudora
>for years, and waited for the next version to support Unicode ... and
>then for the next one ... and now Qualcomm has apparently dropped
>Eudora, so ....
>
>Maybe the Mac version is different or the Mac OS can fill in the gap
>somehow.

That could well be.

>
>I think all other modern e-mail clients support Unicode with Windows.
>
>But the ADS list has its messages archived and Web-browsable, so even if
>the recipient uses an inadequate e-mail program the messages _should_ be
>legible on the Web, assuming any modern browser. Sending unusual
>characters (or even inputting them) may be another matter.
>
>I still don't feel too secure. I sent the Chinese "hello" to ADS and to
>myself at the same time: the copy which went directly to me was OK but
>the one arriving through ADS had a bad character, which also appeared in
>the Web archive. The e-mail client at the ADS end presumably did some
>bit-stripping or something ....

What has always puzzled me is that "styles" and fonts are regularized
(i.e. removed) for messages sent to ADS.  Doug's message here reminds
me of the fact that whenever I send a message with any change of
style (italic/bold), font, size, or color to both ADS and myself, my
own version looks like the one I sent but the ADS version with all of
the styling stripped.  I don't have much occasion for sending
anything with Chinese characters, but the reduction affects whatever
I send in mixed styles/fonts.  Luckily, this reduction or
neutralization doesn't mess up "smart quotes" the way it used to in
the bad old days.

LH

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