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seahorse
Senior Member
USA
1075 Posts |
 Posted - 27 August 2002 : 21:56:58
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Hi All,
I wanted to ask everybody if anyone has experienced any problems with browsers not displaying pages using UTF-8 encoding. I've been experimenting with UTF-8 on a test site that was using Japanese Shift JIS encoding and have been getting a lot of complaints from users whose browsers don't display utf-8 encoded pages unless they manually reset the encoding to utf-8.
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Ken
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Worldwide Partner Group
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
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4116 Posts |
Posted - 28 August 2002 : 07:48:51
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| Do you know their browsers and settings?< |
 Stop the WAR! |
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n/a
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593 Posts |
Posted - 28 August 2002 : 15:44:24
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Japanese contents/chars tend to go to either Auto-select, Shift-JIS, or EUC...and not all the time but sometimes it happens that you need to refresh (or clean a cashe) to set the page to a new encoded page - like utf-8, if it has been used with other encodes...not sure though.
Second thought...if you set a default encode to utf-8 to pages which originally contained Shift-JIS encoded pages, all original Shift-JIS charsets will appear corrupted...as once they are rendered in the html with Shift-JIS charsets, they retain that charsets and won't render correctly in utf-8. I just remembered that when I changed my Shift-JIS forum to utf-8, I had to repopulated the contents using utf-8 compatible Japanese input editor/method.
if this is a case, a browser may retain Shift-JIS encoding format info...???
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Taku
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Edited by - n/a on 28 August 2002 18:07:32 |
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seahorse
Senior Member
USA
1075 Posts |
Posted - 28 August 2002 : 22:27:30
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quote:
Originally posted by bozden
Do you know their browsers and settings?
IE 5.0. The majority of users are only internal company employees at this point. The settings are a mix depending on the user. The company defaults are to Japanese Shift JIS. The problem is that if I try introducing this to the larger internet environment, I can't control what settings are used.
Right now, if someone with settings for Shift JIS looks at a utf-8 page, the only thing they'll see is a blank white page. When I got the first complaints, I couldn't figure out what was wrong, because my browser was set to auto-detect and the pages displayed fine to me.
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Ken
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Worldwide Partner Group
Microsoft |
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n/a
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593 Posts |
Posted - 28 August 2002 : 23:10:44
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quote:
Originally posted by seahorse
IE 5.0. The majority of users are only internal company employees at this point. The settings are a mix depending on the user. The company defaults are to Japanese Shift JIS. The problem is that if I try introducing this to the larger internet environment, I can't control what settings are used.
I don't think you can "control" this enviornment, unless as a company, you have a general guideline for company default browser and encoding scheme...If the company default is Shift-JIS then, it may introduce switching browser encodings depending on the contents of pages at client/end user sides....Or have to educate your users/internal customers what a general guideline would be.... You got a little design issue and some usage guideline issue....it seems.
quote:
Right now, if someone with settings for Shift JIS looks at a utf-8 page, the only thing they'll see is a blank white page. When I got the first complaints, I couldn't figure out what was wrong, because my browser was set to auto-detect and the pages displayed fine to me.
You cannot view UTF-8 encoded pages/charsets with a browser setting with Shift-JIS or vice a versa...Cannot have a mix and match here... unless someone comes up with super generic browser enviornments with totally "universal" encoding scheme...which I doubt will happen for a while....I even saw some MSDN resource articles talking about inadequacy of current locale/language coding schemes and LCID definitions inhandling various language contents...too many variables and variations...and different implementations.. a browser or web site tends to be "optimized" for the most "preferred" encoding type and font type....
I think you have a problem as I understand some of your server side environment is using UTF-8/unicode as a "standard" and you have a client side/presentation layer side of handling contents set with using Shift-JIS encoding/charsets....
If you want to have contents in Shift-JIS to be in utf-8, as you know, you have to "reformat" the contents in utf-8, not just simply changing a browser encoding setting. As far as I know, you cannot simply view one encoded contents (char sets, etc.) with another encoding type... the whole "character codes/represenation" and rendering are different. Depending on how html/web page is formatted, you get the situation like you are mentioning here....
Well .... then there is some charsets doesn't exist for some languages...
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Taku
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seahorse
Senior Member
USA
1075 Posts |
Posted - 28 August 2002 : 23:26:43
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quote:
Originally posted by LeoRat
quote:
Originally posted by seahorse
IE 5.0. The majority of users are only internal company employees at this point. The settings are a mix depending on the user. The company defaults are to Japanese Shift JIS. The problem is that if I try introducing this to the larger internet environment, I can't control what settings are used.
I don't think you can "control" this enviornment, unless as a company, you have a general guideline for company default browser and encoding scheme...If the company default is Shift-JIS then, it may introduce switching browser encodings depending on the contents of pages at client/end user sides....Or have to educate your users/internal customers what a general guideline would be.... You got a little design issue and some usage guideline issue....it seems.
I know that I can't control the environment. That's a problem with utf-8 as far as I see it. Unless a browser can automatically switch to adjust for uft-8 encoding, it's better to avoid it and stick to the traditional shift JIS japanese encoding.
The internal search engine on my site works better with utf-8. I only need to encode the search page in utf-8. It will still index shift-jis pages without any problems. The only drawback is that people may have this display problem on the search page. I don't see a solution here, which really stinks.
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Ken
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Worldwide Partner Group
Microsoft |
Edited by - seahorse on 29 August 2002 03:04:55 |
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Posted - 29 August 2002 : 00:30:54
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Ken, can you tell me what the language and language script in the browser are set?
Taku can you direct me to the documentation you talked about?
I saw this effect about 12 hours ago while visiting the site here: http://forum.snitz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=33848
and tring to switch between utf-8, Turkish and Japaneese... This can cause huge problems.
Did you encounter this after so much months, or was it there?< |
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seahorse
Senior Member
USA
1075 Posts |
Posted - 29 August 2002 : 03:09:15
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quote:
Originally posted by bozden
Ken, can you tell me what the language and language script in the browser are set?
The browser is IE 5.0 Japanese version. Default encoding is set to shift-jis.
quote:
Did you encounter this after so much months, or was it there?
This is my first encounter with this problem. It happened almost immediately after switching my test pages to utf-8.
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Ken
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Worldwide Partner Group
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Posted - 29 August 2002 : 03:27:39
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quote:
Originally posted by seahorse
quote:
Originally posted by bozden
Ken, can you tell me what the language and language script in the browser are set?
The browser is IE 5.0 Japanese version. Default encoding is set to shift-jis.
No, I was asking the ones under Tools/Internet Options, Defaults Tab, and then see bottom part for "Language" and "Font" buttons...
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Stop the WAR! |
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n/a
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593 Posts |
Posted - 29 August 2002 : 04:13:08
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quote:
Originally posted by bozden
Ken, can you tell me what the language and language script in the browser are set?
Taku can you direct me to the documentation you talked about?
I saw this effect about 12 hours ago while visiting the site here: http://forum.snitz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=33848
and tring to switch between utf-8, Turkish and Japaneese... This can cause huge problems.
Did you encounter this after so much months, or was it there?
Bozden,
It was there....this was/is one of the main known problems regarding language/encoding handling.... if I understand your question correctly. That's why I was asking before -- whether you are considering "automatic browser language detection" feature...which we used to have for a part of dynamic web globalization service... You cannot have this feature enabled on the forum unless you have a really nicely internationalized and globalized enviornment... otherwise you are still jaggling with locale/LCID/encoding etc.etc.. no escape here, as far as I can see. Code switching itself do not mean it will do a kind of automatic data conversion among charsets/strings with appropriate encoding.... so to speak....
Documentation - gee, I have to dig back - it's one of those in W3C, Unicode, MSDN/Globalization, that I had in my site resources sometime back but I removed them all, and don't remember exactly where. Go to MSDN and search for Globalization, locale/LCID, etc. and there is the issue related to a state of art on issues/debate and some other issues that seemed to be discussed and reviewed by standard committees etc. to come up with better schemes as current locale/region/LCID coding scheme are more based on geolocational information than types of languages (inclusive of various variations/dialects etc. of the same source language but can be spoken/used in various parts of the world....)But I don't remember they mentioned anything specific for code changes etc.... Reminded me of a language Esparante (?spelling) I used to know...not quite there as universal language...
At least you got resource file of language strings separated from source/architecture/codes so they can be handled... the issue is not easy for translation alone, it's a basic design of application/programs....
also if you are switching between UTF-8, Turkish, Japanese, etc. There are some built in issues.... UTF-8 can handle any languages as long as they are utf-8 formatted... Turkish, Japanese, etc. using the ISO group encoding, won't show properly between different ISO groups and not with UTF-8.... This is the point I was trying to point out people who are trying to use multilingual enviornment...
Or am I responding to your Q correctly here?
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Taku
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seahorse
Senior Member
USA
1075 Posts |
Posted - 29 August 2002 : 05:57:30
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quote:
No, I was asking the ones under Tools/Internet Options, Defaults Tab, and then see bottom part for "Language" and "Font" buttons...
Oh. 
language
Japanese [ja]
English US [en-us]
font
MSPGothic in Japanese MSPƒSƒVƒbƒN
MSGothic in Japanese MSƒSƒVƒbƒN
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Ken
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