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Posted by cwdjrxyz on 06/01/06 16:49
cwdjrxyz wrote:
> Ioannis wrote:
> > Need someone to check the display of Greek on my webpage. I am using a
> > <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-7">
> > tag, and not UTF-8 characters, so I am unsure if non-Greek Windows computers
> > automatically display the Greek ok.
> >
> > http://ioannis.virtualcomposer2000.com/math/index.html
> >
> > if you can, please tell me if the Greek letters in the cyan quote above the
> > animated .gif show up ok and not as gibberish.
>
> I checked you page on all of my browsers. I am using the Windows XP OS
> with all updates including sp2, and the OS and all browsers are English
> version.
>
> The Greek characters displayed correctly on Mozilla 1.7.11, Netscape
> 8.0.4, Firefox 1.5.0.3, Opera 8.54, W3Cs Amaya 8.1b, SBC/Yahoo DSL
> Version 6.00-XCSX;sp2 (slightly modified IE6), and the old Netscape
> 4.8.
>
> I also viewed on a MSNTV Viewer 2.8[build 20] simulator program for the
> old MSNTV set top box. This old box did not support Greek
> characters(and many other things). It displayed Geek instead of Greek -
> upper case English characters, each with different strange accent marks
> above them. The old MSNTV boxes likely are down to under one million
> units and are in the US only, although there once were some in Canada,
> and there is a new version of the box (MSNTV2) that is completely
> different and based on a watered down IE6 browser. The new version box
> likely supports Greek, but I have not seen one.
I have now found an appendix in Powells 4'th ed. of HTML & XHTML that
gives some data for support of Greek characters in some older browsers.
These include IE: 4, 5, 5.5; Netscape: 6,7; Opera 6.2, 7. This list
does not include all browsers and all older versions, so some other
browsers should support Greek characters also.
Support of Greek characters, even in English language browsers, is
extremely important because of their wide use in mathematics and
physics for symbols. For example, one of the classical texts concerning
theoretical physics by two professors at MIT goes through English
characters in uppercase, lower case and also boldface and italics as
well as some underlines and overlines. In addition they use both upper
and lower Greek cases. Still they run out of characters and use a few
Hebrew ones in their text. In mathematics and physics it is usual to
use a single character for each object such as "c" for the speed of
light in vacuum rather than perhaps "lightspeed" as might be done in
javascrapt math calculations. Of course all characters must be well
defined. This somewhat reminds me of an old joke about how you can tell
if a philosopher is good. A good philosopher spends 50 minutes in first
defining terms followed by ten minutes of his or her oral presentation
:-) .
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