I've done some research into Browser/OS combinations and the entities they
will or will not display correctly. (Thanks to Freda Lockert for the Mac IE5
and NN4 stats.) You can find this table at:
http://www.chucke.com/entities_problems.html.

The bottom line? No browser or operating system is perfect, but the newest
browser versions (IE5.x and NN6.x) on both PC and Mac do the best job with
all the various entity types.

But what should the average HTML coder use to ensure the broadest acceptance
of their non-standard characters? The surprising answer is that they should
forego the entities and use the ASCII characters themselves (as input via PC
with the ALT+NUM combination on the keyboard). Another way to get them into
the doc on a PC is to use the Character Map (Start -> Programs ->
Accessories -> Character Map).

I don't know how a Mac user would go about getting the actual ASCII
characters into a doc.

Again, I had always thought that the actual ASCII characters would not
display correctly on Macs because of the difference in character mapping,
but the research I just did (which, admittedly, leaves out IE 3 on both Mac
and PC) seems to argue FOR the ASCII characters.

I'd still like to see how these characters display on UNIX/LINUX systems
running NN4.x and 6.x. Plus anyone with IE3 on Mac or PC is also welcome to
chime in. I'd suggest screen-capturing the original page
(http://www.chucke.com/entities.html) and forwarding the captures to me.

Thanks!

Chuck Evans
Captura, Inc. 
(425) 803-6455 
http://www.captura.com

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