# Need help with Unicode - combining accent marks with Cyrillic letters, and so on.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 18, 2002, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636 "2002-07-18T15:55:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Lodrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lodrain)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2002, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/1 "2002-07-18T15:55:12Z")
Here’s the deal - I’m writing in Cyrillic letters with Unicode. I try to add an accent to a letter in Cyrillic, but all I get is garbage, even to the letters that are identical to their Roman equivalents (which work when I combine accents with them, by the way). Nothing in the documentation I found online says much about combining accent marks and the limitations thereof. I’ve looked at my Unicode in Netscape, Internet Explorer and Mozilla, and they’re equally goofed-up. Maybe I downloaded the wrong font, but I got the fonts from Microsoft - I should think that they’d be up-to-date with Unicode if they’re distributing fonts.
What am I doing wrong?
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### Author:  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2002, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/2 "2002-07-18T15:57:28Z")
This may be a dumb question, but what application are you using to compose the Unicode text?
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### Author:  [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2002, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/3 "2002-07-18T16:24:00Z")
My Character Map has a subrange for Cyrillic, and some of the characters are accented (such as kje). I’m running W2K Professional.
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### Author:  [@Lodrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lodrain)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2002, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/4 "2002-07-18T21:27:57Z")
I’m typing the codes with Notepad (after converting the hexidecimal number in the tables I have to decimal, of course) and looking at them in a Web browser.
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### Author:  [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/5 "2002-07-19T00:26:42Z")
**¯ ¡ ¨**
**Ї Ќ Ў Ё**
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### Author:  [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/6 "2002-07-19T00:36:41Z")
ok, i tried doing it in MS Word. I’d see it fine in Word, then i copy pasted to the reply box… it came out ok… but when i previewed, it messed up like the first line in my post above.
to correctly have it display in a browser, you would have to use the escape codes…
for the four example characters used in line 2 of my post above:
````auto
```php
Ї Ќ Ў Ё
````
```auto
*note: i had to use the vb php tag just to keep the escape characters from escaping :)*
*note 2: i would think the italics tag would make my smiley tilt his stupid head :) *
```
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/7 "2002-07-19T01:43:27Z")
Dude. Here’s the deal.
You need to be running the very latest version of Windows (XP or 2000) and the very latest version of Internet Explorer six-point-whatever.
Unicode has not been supported until now. Now, thanks to Microsoft which finally got around to upgrading this capability.
AFAIK, Netscape still doesn’t support Unicode.
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### Author:  [@Lodrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lodrain)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/8 "2002-07-19T02:44:29Z")
Oh. Should I be smacking my forehead with steel gauntlets, or do you want to?
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/9 "2002-07-19T02:48:51Z")
Not even Mozilla 1.0 or Netscape 6.2?
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### Author:  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/10 "2002-07-19T04:27:02Z")
Netscape seems to offer much richer Unicode support than IE, at least in Windows 95/98. I imagine Mozilla does too, since it’s the same engine as Netscape (I think). If it doesn’t show up in those, then it’s possible that it’s just not supported by anyone. **Lodrain** , can you give us an example of a Unicode character you want to display? For instance, 2222 hex = 8738 dec. You don’t have to convert it to decimal, but you can. You can type it as:
∢ (∢)
or
₺ (∢)
On Netscape, it looks like a little angle sign or something. I don’t know; I picked it at random. So, what’s the code for a character you’re having trouble with?
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### Author:  [@Dreaming\_of\_Maria\_Callas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dreaming_of_Maria_Callas)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/11 "2002-07-19T04:28:15Z")
Mozilla and Netscape 6 both support at least UTF-8, in fact I believe Mozilla supports up to UTF-32.
UnuMondo
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### Author:  [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/12 "2002-07-19T06:34:24Z")
IE has supported Unicode since version 4.0 (including Win9x). I’ve done dozens of web apps that make use of UTF-8 for European and Asian languages, and I’ve never had a problem with IE.
**Achernar** , could you explain what you mean by Netscape having better support than IE? I’m not sure what you mean.
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### Author:  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/13 "2002-07-19T06:46:26Z")
It’s just my experience playing around with Unicode characters. For instance, on my computer, the symbol I used in my last post (character 2222 hex) shows up as a mathematical (I think) symbol in Netscape (7.0 PR1), but as an empty box in Internet Explorer (6.0.2600). I’m running Windows 98.
Now, a while back I was trying to get Esperanto characters in Unicode and ran into a similar problem. On every machine I tried, running Windows 98, Netscape and Opera would render them fine, but Navigator would put up ?'s, and IE would put up boxes. Except on one guy’s computer. He only had IE, so I couldn’t test the other browsers, but on his the Esperanto characters showed up fine. Go figure. So my conclusion was that IE (at least up through 6.0) may have a way to make it support all this extra Unicode, but that it wasn’t consistent.
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### Author:  [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)
#### Post date: [July 19, 2002, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/14 "2002-07-19T15:04:02Z")
Most Asian websites still do not use Unicode, let alone ISO 10646 (UCS).
**Achernar** , I have no problems reading those symbols with Mozilla 1.0.
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### Author:  [@femtosecond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/femtosecond)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2002, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-help-with-unicode-combining-accent-marks-with-cyrillic-letters-and-so-on/119636/15 "2002-07-20T10:46:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> _Originally posted by xash_
> **note: i had to use the vb php tag just to keep the escape characters from escaping**
But that’s exacly how you do it, you escape the escape character! 🙂 Type **Ї** to display **Ї**