This is odd…
(All of the below are installed on the same OS: WinXp)
Mozilla 1.1a: all codes display properly.
Netscape 4.79: some do, some don’t, the ones that don’t are question marks. If I force the character set to Unicode, I still don’t have all characters displaying: but the ones that don’t are boxes.
IE6: some do, some don’t, the ones that don’t are boxes. If I force it to use Unicode, the same thing happens: some do, some don’t, and it’s the same ones that show/don’t show.
So, one out of three displays the Unicode set properly. (I don’t have Opera, so I can’t test with that.) Huh.
I believe that Netscape 6 and up manage to render all Unicode properly, whether it’s installed on the computer or not. I’m not as sure about Opera, but I think it’s the same way. I don’t know how they do this, or if there’s a way to make it work on other browsers.
In general, I don’t think that browsers should be expected to render all Unicode, even though it’s useful. If you’re interested in using some symbols, however, most of the characters on the Character Entity Reference page should be safe. These all have alternate forms besides their numerical-code form. Some useful ones include:
Accented characters, like è (è)
The entire upper- and lower-case Greek alphabet, like Ω (Ω)
Mathematical symbols, like ∞ (∞)
So, I suggest that if you want to use IPA, you insert the Unicode, but put a caveat that not everyone will be able to read it. Better than nothing, I imagine.
I think posting something that can only be viewed by part of the members is a poor practice. I suggest instead that you find an equivalence of IPA in “standard” characters, use the IPA equivalents, with a link to the “conversion table” between IPA and the “standard” equivalents. It took me about 10 seconds to find an example of such a scheme with Google. equivalents to IPA
In that case, I suggest that people who are concerned with proper practice discontinue use of the Symbol tag. I have brought up before that it does not appear like you expect it should in Netscape. Using the codes I mentioned above for the symbolic Greek alphabet is what the standards call for.
Achernar - example? I don’t think the problem with the symbol tag is with Netscape, it’s with the version of the Symbol font you have installed on your system. If you stick to greek letters and not the extended characters then I haven’t seen a problem with the Symbol font.
Example? Everything. Atreyu’s θ at the top of this page looks like a Times New Roman q to me. I’ve used Netscape 6 extensively on four computers (all, admittedly, running Win98) and have never seen the Symbol font work correctly, on this board or anywhere. It just looks like the default font. I have asked before in a thread on this, “Does anyone have Netscape 6 and can see these Greek characters correctly?” with no response. I just checked this same thread with IE, and the θ looks right. I don’t see how it can be a mis-installation - the Symbol font is installed just like every other.
Okay okay, it turns out that I’m not crazy. Last time I brought this up there was nothing on the web to support me, but now there is. The Symbol font, it turns out, is one of those things that browsers should not support, but they do. This page on the Symbol font may be ranting and creepy, but they seem to know what they’re talking about:
I can confirm what you say using Netscape 6.2 on my Macintosh - the letters in the symbol font show up as roman alphabet characters. The symbol font does show up with Netscape 4.7x though.