HTML Entities

by Chuck Evans <Chucke(at)captura.com>

Date:	Fri, 12 Jan 2001 13:04:19 -0800
To:	"HWG Techniques (E-mail)" <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
	todo: View Thread, Original

About a week ago, I and others on this list had questions about the correct
entities to use for particular characters in HTML. I was particularly
interested in whether ASCII-numeric entities, such as &#0153; (trademark)
are supported in different browsers, and in particular, on Macs.

The challenge comes with ASCII numbers 128 through 159 (where lots of useful
symbols are, such as the trademark, euro, bullet, en dash, and em dash). The
ASCII entities don't show up on Macs. But the HTML entities (&ndash; &mdash;
and &trade;) don't show up in NN 4.x or 3.x browsers. So there is a tradeoff
to be made if you (like me) still want to use those characters. Who do you
piss off? Mac users or NN 4.x users?

Add to this the third possibility of not using entities at all, but
inserting the actual characters (on a PC) using the ALT+ASCII Number (hold
down alt and type the number -- all four digits -- on the numeric keypad
with numlock on). How do THOSE characters show up on Macs? (They all show up
fine in all the browsers I've tested on Windows.)

And then, of course, there's the whole UniCode system (&#x???? using hex
numbers).

To answer my own questions, I put together a big table of entities at
http://www.chucke.com/entities.html. I couldn't find one elsewhere that
showed the UniCode entities and ALT+NUM characters side by side with the
other entities. So I combined a good Entity table I found with some UniCode
data (see refs on the page).

I'm going to go find a Mac in our company (we have a few for testing) and
check out the characters. I welcome anyone else as perplexed as me to head
there as well.

Maybe we can all report back our findings? 

Also, if anyone on this list is an Entity Guru, or knows of a site with more
answers than I was able to find, please chime in.

Thanks.

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

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