Strange Characters

[David Ross]

I sometimes see strange combinations of characters in on-line text
(Web pages and newsgroup messages). These appear to be caused by
either incorrect coding of special symbols or by incompatibilities
in how different composers and browsers handle those symbols. (I
am using Netscape Communicator 4.75 on a PC with Windows 95.)

One combination is a triplet of the letter 'a' with a circumflex,
the euro currency symbol, and the raised TM trademark sign. Using
escaped characters on a PC with windows (WINDOWS-1252 codes),
these would be ALT-0226, ALT-0128, ALT-0153. These are Unicode
v3.0 00E2, 20AC, 2122. From the context, I believe this triplet
results from attempting to code either a straight or right-hand
single-quote or apostrophe (a single character).

My question is: What was actually coded to create this problem?
I ask this so that I might avoid committing a similar error. I
would also like to inform those who make this error how they can
correct their text.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.vcnet.com/~rossde/>.

The only reason we have so many laws is that not enough people
will do the right thing. (© 1997)

[King Mustard]

Netscape? ARGH!
Windows 95? ARGH! :)

--

{AGUT} Art Work:
www.bbelectrical.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

ICQ:
77162221

[Louis Vosloo]

The most common problem is use of platform specific character codes without
thinking.
And in particular using Macintosh font encoding.
Windows font encoding tends not to be so bad since it matches ISO 8859-1
at least in the 32-127 and 160-255 ranges.

e.g. endash and emdash become Eth and Ntilde.

quotesinglbase becomes acircumflex
Adieresis becomes Euro
ocircumflex becomes trademark

David Ross wrote:

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