French "No" character entity

[Haines Brown]

I'm having trouble finding the character entity for the French
abbreviation for "number" (capital N followed by a small supercript
o, period).

My references are not listing it. Where would I find an answer to this
question (don't find it in the W3C_char_entiti es document).

--
Haines Brown
brownh@hartford-hwp.com
kb1grm@arrl.net

https://www.hartford-hwp.com

[Jacqui or (maybe) Pete]

Re: French "No&quo t; character entity

In article <m2adbcout4.fsf @hartford-hwp.com>, brownh@hartford-hwp.com
says...[color=blue]
> I'm having trouble finding the character entity for the French
> abbreviation for "number" (capital N followed by a small supercript
> o, period).
>[/color]
Would N&deg; be any good?

[Jim Dabell]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

Haines Brown wrote:

[snip][color=blue]
> My references are not listing it. Where would I find an answer to this
> question (don't find it in the W3C_char_entiti es document).[/color]

I see Alan's already answered your question, but for future reference, you
can look for characters at <URL:http://www.unicode.org/charts/>.

--
Jim Dabell

[Stan Brown]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

In article <m2adbcout4.fsf @hartford-hwp.com> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Haines Brown <brownh@hartfor d-
hwp.com> wrote:[color=blue]
>I'm having trouble finding the character entity for the French
>abbreviation for "number" (capital N followed by a small supercript
>o, period).
>
>My references are not listing it. Where would I find an answer to this
>question (don't find it in the W3C_char_entiti es document).[/color]

You want the "masculine ordinal indicator", &#186; or &ordm;. I
don't know what "references " you tried, but I found it at the W3C's
list of entities,
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html#h-24.2>.

Note that this is an ISO-8859-1 character.

(Somebody suggested a degree mark. That's too small, at least in the
first font I checked; and I think it may be at the wrong height
above the baseline too.)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Stan Brown]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

In article <Xns93BDA172EC4 9jkorpelacstutf i@193.229.0.31> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Jukka K. Korpela
<jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:[color=blue]
>Stan Brown <the_stan_brown @fastmail.fm> wrote:
>[color=green]
>> You want the "masculine ordinal indicator", &#186; or &ordm;.[/color]
>
>I would say no.[/color]
[color=blue]
>would be illogical to use the latter, since the symbol does not stand
>for any ordinal number. I think the masculine ordinal indicator should
>_only_ be used when writing ordinal numbers in Spanish.[/color]

Correction accepted. I thought it was logically right, but I see the
distinction you're making.

(As for degree mark, I knew it was logically wrong but for a one-
shot Usenaut I thought the presentational argument would carry more
weight.)

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Alan's suggestion of using numero sign U+2116 is certainly correct in
> some sense. It's apparently the kind of symbol used in French. But
> there's the practical consideration that many fonts don't contain that
> character, and browsers may fail to render it at all.[/color]

U+2116 is essentially a Cyrillic character, which you can find on every
Russian mechanical (!) typewriter. It's included in ISO-8859-5, cp866,
Windows-1251, MacCyrillic, etc. etc.
<http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/cyrillic.html5>

This symbol is firmly established in Russian like "#" in US English.
However, in many fonts the glyph for this symbol doesn't look okay
to be used with French; it rather has a certain "Russian touch".
<http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/pdfs/BSCQ/BaskervilleCyrL TStd-Upright.pdf>

--
But thats what FP puts in to the page, so i asume thats correct
Harry H. Arends in microsoft.publi c.frontpage.cli ent

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

I wrote:
[color=blue]
> This symbol is firmly established in Russian like "#" in US English.
> However, in many fonts the glyph for this symbol doesn't look okay
> to be used with French; it rather has a certain "Russian touch".[/color]

See also
<http://www.microsoft.c om/typography/developers/fdsspec/symbol.htm>

--
But thats what FP puts in to the page, so i asume thats correct
Harry H. Arends in microsoft.publi c.frontpage.cli ent

[Haines Brown]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

I appreciate the interesting comments on how to display the numero
character, but the other initial question remains: How do I display
any character referenced by its unicode index? For example, how would
I reference U+2116 in a HTML doc (besides the issue of whether a font
actually contains it)?

I assume I have to define:

@font-face {
unicode-range: U+2116;
}

but how do I then call that character in the document body?

--
Haines Brown
brownh@hartford-hwp.com
kb1grm@arrl.net

https://www.hartford-hwp.com

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

Haines Brown <brownh@hartfor d-hwp.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I appreciate the interesting comments on how to display the numero
> character, but the other initial question remains: How do I display
> any character referenced by its unicode index?[/color]

That was _not_ what you asked. You specifically wrote:
"I'm having trouble finding the character entity for the French
abbreviation for "number""
The short answer is that there is no entity for it in HTML. What we
have tried to do is to guess that you actually wanted to know how to
render the numero character, instead of wanting to specifically use an
entity, which is impossible.

The question that you ask now is both very simple and very complicated.
It's very simple in the sense that by HTML specifications, any
character can be denoted by using the character reference &#n; where n
is its Unicode code position (index) in decimal. It's very complicated
in the sense that browsers fail to implement this properly, partly for
very understandable reasons, and there are many things to consider in
practice. I would suggest some tutorialish treatise like

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/quick.html

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/chars.var

[color=blue]
> For example, how would
> I reference U+2116 in a HTML doc (besides the issue of whether a font
> actually contains it)?[/color]

For example, as №. Or "as such", as character, in UTF-8 encoding,
in a document advertized to use that encoding; you would probably want
to use a Unicode-capable text editor for this.
[color=blue]
> I assume I have to define:
>
> @font-face {
> unicode-range: U+2116;
> }[/color]

No, that would be CSS and poorly supported at that. If it worked, in a
proper context, it would just help a browser "to avoid checking or
downloading a font that does not have sufficient glyphs to render a
particular character" (to quote the CSS2 specification).

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Haines Brown]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> writes:
[color=blue]
> What we have tried to do is to guess that you actually wanted to
> know how to render the numero character, instead of wanting to
> specifically use an entity, which is impossible.[/color]

That is correct. I misspoke. Unfortunately, I have in hand a doc that
speaks of "decimal entities," which I realize is incorrect, but it
contributed to my sloppiness.
[color=blue]
> The question that you ask now is both very simple and very
> complicated.[/color]
[color=blue]
> I would suggest some tutorialish treatise like
> http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/quick.html
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/chars.var[/color]

Yes, I'm currently ploughing through some of this interesting
material. Thanks.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > I assume I have to define:
> >
> > @font-face {
> > unicode-range: U+2116;
> > }[/color]
>
> No, that would be CSS and poorly supported at that. If it worked, in a
> proper context, it would just help a browser "to avoid checking or
> downloading a font that does not have sufficient glyphs to render a
> particular character" (to quote the CSS2 specification).[/color]

Thanks for the clarification. Is it correct to conclude, then, that
the unicode-range definition only serves to speed rendering by
preventing the downloading of uneeded glyphs?

--
Haines Brown
brownh@hartford-hwp.com
kb1grm@arrl.net

https://www.hartford-hwp.com

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

Haines Brown <brownh@hartfor d-hwp.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Unfortunately, I have in hand a doc
> that speaks of "decimal entities," which I realize is incorrect,
> but it contributed to my sloppiness.[/color]

That's understandable, especially since even the W3C materials mess
things up. The terminological confusion is unfortunate, but perhaps the
most serious confusion in practice is the common idea that one cannot
use a character if there is no entity for it. Entities are like macros
or named constants, which denote some strings, namely (in the case of
HTML) character references.
[color=blue]
> Is it correct to conclude, then, that
> the unicode-range definition only serves to speed rendering by
> preventing the downloading of uneeded glyphs?[/color]

Yes, something like that is the idea behind it. And unicode-range
definitions are poorly supported by browsers, and have been removed
from the CSS 2.1 draft due to lack of implementations .

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Stan Brown]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

In article <m2r84lo086.fsf @hartford-hwp.com> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Haines Brown <brownh@hartfor d-
hwp.com> wrote:[color=blue]
>For example, how would
>I reference U+2116 in a HTML doc (besides the issue of whether a font
>actually contains it)?[/color]

This is answered in the HTML spec (URL below): &#x2116; will display
character 2116hex if it's available to the browser.
[color=blue]
>I assume I have to define:
>
> @font-face {
> unicode-range: U+2116;
> }[/color]

Good gracious no, how horrid!

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Dean Tiegs]

UTF-16, UTF-8 (was: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity)

Haines Brown <brownh@hartfor d-hwp.com> writes:
[color=blue]
> First, I might be inclined to be adventurous and set charset=UTF-16.[/color]

You almost certainly don't want to do this. You can't make your
documents UTF-16 just by changing the XML declaration (unless you have
an advanced, XML-aware editor that does this -- I don't know of such
an editor); each character in your document has to be expanded from
eight bits to sixteen. If your documents are in Latin script, UTF-16
is wasteful compared to UTF-8; UTF-16 is best reserved for Arabic,
east Asian, south Asian and other non-Latin scripts.
[color=blue]
> Second, I also have this in my documents' preface:
>
> <?xml version ="1.0" standalone="yes " encoding="UTF-8" ?>
>
> My impression is that the encoding= statement is optional (documents
> validate OK without it).[/color]

It's optional if and only if the document is UTF-8 or UTF-16. Since
all US-ASCII documents are also UTF-8, you can also omit it if you
have no non-ASCII characters. Note this means literal characters; you
can always use entities and character references for non-ASCII
characters -- they do not affect the encoding declaration.

--
Dean Tiegs, NE¼-20-52-25-W4
“Confortare et esto robustus”

http://telusplanet.net/public/dctiegs/

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

Stan Brown <the_stan_brown @fastmail.fm> wrote:
[color=blue]
> This is answered in the HTML spec (URL below): &#x2116; will display[/color]
^^^^[color=blue]
> character 2116hex if it's available to the browser.[/color]

It _should_ display but it will not in many versions of Netscape 4.x
and perhaps other browsers. You better write № .

--
But thats what FP puts in to the page, so i asume thats correct
Harry H. Arends in microsoft.publi c.frontpage.cli ent

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: French &quot;No&quo t; character entity

Haines Brown <brownh@hartfor d-hwp.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> This I corrected, and the accented characters now display
> without reference to their index:
> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />[/color]

Don't do that! Rather specify the encoding (charset) in the HTTP header.

http://www.w3.org/International/O-HTTP-charset

http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/ns-burp.html

[color=blue]
> First, I might be inclined to be adventurous and set charset=UTF-16. What
> would be the disadvantages?[/color]

What would be the advantages?

--

http://www.unics.uni-hannover.de/nhtcapri/plonk.txt