Cyrillic

[Philipp Lenssen]

Does anybody have experience displaying Cyrillic in common browsers
with common settings?

I found the following page researching the topic, however I cannot
display all characters in the table (IE6, either automatic encoding
detection, or forced Cyrillic encoding):

<http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>

For example, the first character in the table ("Cyrillic Capital Letter
Ie With Grave") will display as default-box (what IExplorer does when
it can't display the character).

Thanks for pointers!

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

Re: Cyrillic

/Philipp Lenssen/:
[color=blue]
> Does anybody have experience displaying Cyrillic in common browsers
> with common settings?
>
> I found the following page researching the topic, however I cannot
> display all characters in the table (IE6, either automatic encoding
> detection, or forced Cyrillic encoding):
>
> <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>
>
> For example, the first character in the table ("Cyrillic Capital Letter
> Ie With Grave") will display as default-box (what IExplorer does when
> it can't display the character).[/color]

Seems like the characters you point are not present in the fonts I
have installed on my system. Strangely enough Mozilla finds
substitutes for most of them and I see them just fine with Mozilla.

For IE6 to display a character it should be present in the font
which font face is currently selected. There are some exclusions
like the Greek letters and couple of symbol characters which are
displayed with a fixed font face no matter what is currently
selected ("Symbol" is used for the Greek letters).

--
Stanimir

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Cyrillic

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
[color=blue]
> Does anybody have experience displaying Cyrillic in common browsers
> with common settings?[/color]

Cue A.Prilop?

Meantime I'll ask a question. Which font do you have configured for
*Latin* in tools -> internet options -> fonts ?
[color=blue]
> <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>
>
> For example, the first character in the table ("Cyrillic Capital Letter
> Ie With Grave") will display as default-box (what IExplorer does when
> it can't display the character).[/color]

Same here. Clue: WGL4. But try changing your Latin font selection
experimentally to Tahoma and see what happens. It works for me.

Mozilla is a lot better in this regard

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/browsers-fonts.html

cheers

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: Cyrillic

On 4 Jun 2004, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
[color=blue]
> I found the following page researching the topic, however I cannot
> display all characters in the table (IE6, either automatic encoding
> detection, or forced Cyrillic encoding):
> <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>[/color]

I suggest "the other Alan". ;-)
<http://ppewww.ph.gla.a c.uk/~flavell/unicode/unidata04.html>


You see, <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/arabic.html> doesn't
prove anything at all. Arabic requires the use of different glyphs
and a writing direction from right to left. Alan Wood's page
doesn't deal with this features at all. So he is mislead to
conclude that, for example, Macintosh iCab can display both
Arabic and Hebrew. In fact, iCab is completely unfit for Arabic
or Hebrew.
<http://www.google.com/groups?q=iCab+A rabic+author:Pr ilop>
[color=blue]
> For example, the first character in the table ("Cyrillic Capital Letter
> Ie With Grave") will display as default-box (what IExplorer does when
> it can't display the character).[/color]

The MacEdonian letters with grave accent are recent additions to
Unicode and are missing from most fonts. My understanding is that
they are not required for normal writing (and hence missing in
ISO-8859-5) but are used only in dictionaries and the like.

--
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What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

[Philipp Lenssen]

Re: Cyrillic

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
[color=blue]
> On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
>[color=green]
> > Does anybody have experience displaying Cyrillic in common browsers
> > with common settings?[/color]
>[/color]
[color=blue]
>
> Meantime I'll ask a question. Which font do you have configured for
> *Latin* in tools -> internet options -> fonts ?[/color]

Arial...
I always switch to Arial from the default Times New Roman.
[color=blue]
>[color=green]
> > <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>
> >
> > For example, the first character in the table ("Cyrillic Capital
> > Letter Ie With Grave") will display as default-box (what IExplorer
> > does when it can't display the character).[/color]
>
> Same here. Clue: WGL4. But try changing your Latin font selection
> experimentally to Tahoma and see what happens. It works for me.
>[/color]

Hmm, then I can indeed display the first character, and many others.
But there are still some missing.
[color=blue]
> Mozilla is a lot better in this regard
>[/color]

Thanks, however we would need to support both IExplorer and Mozilla
(Netscape 7 et al).

Of course, I'm not really looking for a solution on my system/ browser,
rather a way to provide the best possible solution for a typical user
reading Cyrillic. I did ask for someone reading Cyrillic to test it,
but that still leaves me with trying to provide the best possible page
for the test.

Which character encoding would I serve? UTF-8?

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[Philipp Lenssen]

Re: Cyrillic

Andreas Prilop wrote:
[color=blue]
> On 4 Jun 2004, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
>[color=green]
> > I found the following page researching the topic, however I cannot
> > display all characters in the table (IE6, either automatic encoding
> > detection, or forced Cyrillic encoding):
> > <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>[/color]
>
> I suggest "the other Alan". ;-)
> <http://ppewww.ph.gla.a c.uk/~flavell/unicode/unidata04.html>
>
>[/color]

Thanks, nice table. I can see about 60% of the characers. I suppose
someone with a typical browser set up to browse Cyrillic pages would
see more or even all of them... that would be interesting to know for
me.

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[Andreas Prilop]

Re: Cyrillic

On 4 Jun 2004, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
[color=blue]
> Of course, I'm not really looking for a solution on my system/ browser,
> rather a way to provide the best possible solution for a typical user
> reading Cyrillic.[/color]

"User reading Cyrillic"? What's that? Do you mean Russian text?
Or Bulgarian text? Or Ukrainian text?
[color=blue]
> I did ask for someone reading Cyrillic to test it,
> but that still leaves me with trying to provide the best possible page
> for the test.[/color]

Take these pages for testing:
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/cyrillic.html5>
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/cyrillic.win>
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/multilingual1.h tml#cyrillic>
[color=blue]
> Which character encoding would I serve? UTF-8?[/color]

What do you actually want to achieve?

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: Cyrillic

On 4 Jun 2004, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
[color=blue]
> Thanks, nice table. I can see about 60% of the characers. I suppose
> someone with a typical browser set up to browse Cyrillic pages would
> see more or even all of them... that would be interesting to know for
> me.[/color]

I doubt anyone is up "browsing Cyrillic pages". There are people
reading Russian, people reading Bulgarian, etc. Specify your
language(s)!

--
Top-posting.
What's the most irritating thing on Usenet?

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Cyrillic

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
[color=blue]
> Arial...
> I always switch to Arial from the default Times New Roman.[/color]

Have you understood the part which relates to IE in
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...ers-fonts.html ?

(if you /have/ understood it, then you're doing better than me -
I'm only doing my best to report my practical observations, with some
guesses about the underlying machinery.)

Point 1: naming your font as "Arial" does not fix the repertoire.
There are several different versions of the "Arial" font, covering
very different repertoires.

Point 2: *if* you know that the user has a particularly good (and
properly made) Cyrillic, font then you could select it, e.g via
stylesheet - **BUT** in a WWW context you have no idea whether users
have this font, and most attempts to force the issue can result in a
-worse- rendering for some proportion of readers. I *don't* recommend
trying to set a named font, nor even a list of named fonts, in this
situation, as I say:

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/browsers-fonts.html#dont

[color=blue][color=green]
> > Same here. Clue: WGL4. But try changing your Latin font selection
> > experimentally to Tahoma and see what happens. It works for me.[/color]
>
> Hmm, then I can indeed display the first character, and many others.
> But there are still some missing.[/color]

For me also, with any of the usual fonts. I do have some fonts where
all of the proportional samples (Code2000) and almost all of the
monospace samples ("Monospace" ) are rendered, but they aren't the
world's most aesthetic fonts!!
[color=blue]
> Of course, I'm not really looking for a solution on my system/ browser,[/color]

That's understood, of course. Your browser is only being used as a
test case in this exercise ;-)
[color=blue]
> rather a way to provide the best possible solution for a typical user
> reading Cyrillic.[/color]

It might be hoped that if they were "typical" users reading Cyrillic
then they would have taken whatever action was appropriate to improve
the character coverage of their browser. Maybe install any specific
language support for IE/Windows (did you try that yourself?) or look
for appropriate fonts (let's hope they don't stumble on those old
8-bit fake fonts...).
[color=blue]
> Which character encoding would I serve?[/color]

The locals seem collectively to have decided to use Windows-125x for
whichever value of x is appropriate to their language. There's a
certain irony in that, but I won't dwell on it (I'm sure Andreas will
want to comment, though ;-)

But I'd recommend utf-8 for serving to any halfways-modern browser
now. Even Netscape 4 - as long as they don't need to submit any
forms :-{

[DU]

Re: Cyrillic

Philipp Lenssen wrote:[color=blue]
> Does anybody have experience displaying Cyrillic in common browsers
> with common settings?
>
> I found the following page researching the topic, however I cannot
> display all characters in the table (IE6, either automatic encoding
> detection, or forced Cyrillic encoding):
>
> <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>
>
> For example, the first character in the table ("Cyrillic Capital Letter
> Ie With Grave") will display as default-box (what IExplorer does when
> it can't display the character).
>
> Thanks for pointers![/color]


1- I strongly suggest you get Microsoft True Type Font Extensions (name:
ttfext.exe size: 478KB) from microsoft.com/typography
This utility will tell you thanks to a right-click/Properties on an
installed fonts which charsets can be rendered with such font.

2- In MSIE 6, do
Tools/Internet Options.../Fonts button/Language Script: select/Cyrillic/
and then choose among your installed fonts a default font which will
render Cyrillic accordingly. This is where you can make proper setting.
The problem with this small window interface is that you can not see all
Cyrillic characters as they are rendered but only 8 characters.

3- A properly coded webpage and a properly configured server will very
rarely cause language or character set rendering problem to an user
using a modern browser (e.g.: MSIE 6, Mozilla 1.x, Opera 7.x, Safari
1.x, etc).

DU

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Cyrillic

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, DU wrote:
[color=blue]
> 1- I strongly suggest you get Microsoft True Type Font Extensions (name:
> ttfext.exe size: 478KB) from microsoft.com/typography[/color]

Agreed.
[color=blue]
> This utility will tell you thanks to a right-click/Properties on an
> installed fonts which charsets can be rendered with such font.[/color]

Well, it'll tell you that your Arial supports Cyrillic. It won't tell
you how badly. And this is the trap with IE, since - once it's
selected a font for a particular unicode range - it seems it has no
way of going back and filling in the missing characters from another
font, in the way that e.g Mozilla does.

I'd recommend getting at least a font browser utility like Listfont

http://heiner-eichmann.de/software/listfont/listfont.htm

(use its "show unicode font" button).
[color=blue]
> 2- In MSIE 6, do
> Tools/Internet Options.../Fonts button/Language Script: select/Cyrillic/
> and then choose among your installed fonts a default font which will
> render Cyrillic accordingly.[/color]

In my experience, this won't help - unless your choice of Latin-based
font does *not* support Cyrillic.[1]
[color=blue]
> 3- A properly coded webpage and a properly configured server will very
> rarely cause language or character set rendering problem[/color]

You haven't been reading Usenet, then.
[color=blue]
> using a modern browser[/color]
^^^^^^

Maybe that's the problem with IE6 :-}

have fun

[1] disclaimer - all my tests were done on an IE/Windows that had
been installed for a Latin locale, and testing nothing newer than
Win/2000 Pro yet.

[DU]

Re: Cyrillic

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
[color=blue]
> On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, DU wrote:
>
>[color=green]
>>1- I strongly suggest you get Microsoft True Type Font Extensions (name:
>>ttfext.exe size: 478KB) from microsoft.com/typography[/color]
>
>
> Agreed.
>
>[color=green]
>>This utility will tell you thanks to a right-click/Properties on an
>>installed fonts which charsets can be rendered with such font.[/color]
>
>
> Well, it'll tell you that your Arial supports Cyrillic. It won't tell
> you how badly.[/color]

I did not suggest that such support was impeccable or flawless. Language
packs may be installed too in order to "extend" the support of a font
for other languages: that is the case with Arial. Codepage conversions
may have to be declared too in the windows XP regional and language
advanced options.

And this is the trap with IE, since - once it's[color=blue]
> selected a font for a particular unicode range - it seems it has no
> way of going back and filling in the missing characters from another
> font, in the way that e.g Mozilla does.
>
> I'd recommend getting at least a font browser utility like Listfont
> http://heiner-eichmann.de/software/l...t/listfont.htm
> (use its "show unicode font" button).
>
>[color=green]
>>2- In MSIE 6, do
>>Tools/Internet Options.../Fonts button/Language Script: select/Cyrillic/
>>and then choose among your installed fonts a default font which will
>>render Cyrillic accordingly.[/color]
>
>
> In my experience, this won't help - unless your choice of Latin-based
> font does *not* support Cyrillic.[1]
>[/color]

Defining how cyrillic in one's own browser should be handled (by which
fonts) can help. Changes in language should be indicated in the markup too.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-abbreviated-and-foreign

[color=blue]
>[color=green]
>>3- A properly coded webpage and a properly configured server will very
>>rarely cause language or character set rendering problem[/color]
>
>
> You haven't been reading Usenet, then.[/color]

Reading Usenet is rather a large task to accomplish, you know. Even for
just a few newsgroups related to font, html and web authoring. I don't
have any clue as to how to interpret your statement or what you meant to
say. Your reply, as worded, could suggest that improperly coded webpage
and improperly configured server rarely cause language or character set
rendering problems.
[color=blue]
>
>[color=green]
>>using a modern browser[/color]
>
> ^^^^^^
>
> Maybe that's the problem with IE6 :-}
>[/color]

Mozilla causes far less problems than MSIE 6 in this particular area...
if that is what you meant to say, I agree. :-}

DU

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Cyrillic

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, DU wrote:
[color=blue]
> Alan J. Flavell wrote:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
> >>2- In MSIE 6, do
> >>Tools/Internet Options.../Fonts button/Language Script: select/Cyrillic/
> >>and then choose among your installed fonts a default font which will
> >>render Cyrillic accordingly.[/color]
> >
> > In my experience, this won't help - unless your choice of Latin-based
> > font does *not* support Cyrillic.[1][/color][/color]

I made what appears to be a definite factual statement - at least it's
based on my own tests and observations. If you can refute it, then
I'm interested to learn.
[color=blue]
> Defining how cyrillic in one's own browser should be handled (by which
> fonts) can help.[/color]

Please try this test along with me and see how it accords with your
experience. Use IE to visit this page
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/...unidata04.html (which will
use whatever default font(s) your browser chooses for this situation).

Now visit the tools -> internet options -> fonts UI, and set your font
selection for Latin-based to, let's say, "Arial Black", and set your
selection for Cyrillic to, let's say, "Times New Roman". Close the UI
and observe the display. I'm seeing the cyrillic letters displayed in
Arial Black (not T.N.R).

Re-open the font dialog and change the Latin-based font to "Arial",
without changing the Cyrillic selection. Close the UI. I'm seeing
the cyrillic letters displayed in Arial (not T.N.R).

Now find a font[1] which does _not_ support Cyrillic: I used "Albertus
Extra Bold". Choose that as your Latin-based font. And now I'm
seeing the Cyrillic characters using the T.N.R font which I had
selected.

"Hence or otherwise deduce..." the conclusion which I drew in my page.
[color=blue]
> Changes in language should be indicated in the markup too.
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/...ed-and-foreign[/color]

Maybe you'd like to play your part in this, and demonstrate how adding
an appropriate language markup to the page does (or does not) change
the behaviour of IE. Deal?

But as my page reports (the information was supplied by J.Korpela), IE
*does* seem to take particular 8-bit character codings as hints to
choose an associated font selection, even though we saw no evidence of
it responding to language markup.
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
> >>3- A properly coded webpage and a properly configured server will very
> >>rarely cause language or character set rendering problem[/color][/color][/color]

Let's call that assertion "Exhibit A".
[color=blue][color=green]
> > You haven't been reading Usenet, then.[/color]
>
> Reading Usenet is rather a large task to accomplish, you know. Even for
> just a few newsgroups related to font, html and web authoring. I don't
> have any clue as to how to interpret your statement[/color]

Alright then, in clear text: 'what you have posted leads me to believe
that you're not familiar enough with the situation to be able to make
such a definite statement as "Exhibit A" implies'.
[color=blue]
> or what you meant to say. Your reply, as worded, could suggest that
> improperly coded webpage and improperly configured server rarely
> cause language or character set rendering problems.[/color]

You're surely not trying to be deliberately perverse, or are you?

Properly coded web pages and web server have all too often led to
reports of character rendering problems by others who were using IE.
Especially USAns, who apparently hadn't seen fit to install the
multi-language option, let alone installing support for any particular
additional languages.

My cited web page has details, or at least they're in one of my
associated web pages somewhere.

have fun

[1]You can discern this by using your "MS font properties extension"
and looking at the "charset/Unicode" tab.

[Michaelo]

Re: Cyrillic

Philipp Lenssen wrote:[color=blue]
>
> Does anybody have experience displaying Cyrillic in common browsers
> with common settings?[/color]

Well.
I think normal modern browser
(if during installation was not excluded default lingual support)
must display Cyrillic.
I read ukrainian texts in Kraków (Poland) in small internet - say -
club.
Where, I guess, ukrainians do not come (I am not quite Ukrainian :).
So even there was installed Cyrillic.

So EI's Cyrillic correctly display Russian and Belorussian.

To make browsers automatically determine code set, you should note in in
HTML code,
or in your HTTP dæmon.

By the way are two popular Cyrillic codesets for Ukrainian and Russian.
win-1251
KOI-8 (few variations)
there was two more.

Also you can use standard transliteration , Polish, Czech or German
spelling.

Finally some letters are the same in Cyrillic and Romanic,
some resembles each other, you may try to assemble word of them.

XTO TAM CTOÏTb?
(Who are staying there ?)
Better with capital letters.

ANd one more solution you can put picture on your site,
or compose words with pictures of letters syllabs and other jointed
letters.

[color=blue]
>
> I found the following page researching the topic, however I cannot
> display all characters in the table (IE6, either automatic encoding
> detection, or forced Cyrillic encoding):
>
> <http://www.alanwood.ne t/unicode/cyrillic.html>
>
> For example, the first character in the table ("Cyrillic Capital Letter
> Ie With Grave") will display as default-box (what IExplorer does when
> it can't display the character).
>
> Thanks for pointers![/color]

[Philipp Lenssen]

Re: Cyrillic

Andreas Prilop wrote:
[color=blue]
>
> "User reading Cyrillic"? What's that? Do you mean Russian text?
> Or Bulgarian text? Or Ukrainian text?
>[/color]
[color=blue]
>
> What do you actually want to achieve?[/color]

I suppose part of my question is trying to figue that out.
I guess I want to display pages for Russian users!
My manager handed me this task: "We want to display pages in Cyrillic
soon. Please tell us how to do that and if there are any problems."
I asked for a sample text, and a specific user testing this in the
target market, which turns out to be a Russian.

So I suppose I will copy the characters from the Word Document into
Notepadd (my own Netpadd can't handle UTF-8 at the moment), and deliver
character-enconding UTF-8 via the HTTP-header. Furthermore I will set
the font to Arial as this is the guideline for the web site and does
seem to work just OK.

Thanks for the help so far.

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