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Why "rectangulars" in HTML instead of characters? — Parallax Forums

Why "rectangulars" in HTML instead of characters?

john_sjohn_s Posts: 369
edited 2011-09-13 21:44 in General Discussion
Quite rare, but now and then I see those double-decker 'rectangulars' when browsing the web.

Rectangulars.JPG


Is there a way to avoid that 'art' and see what's behind it in Latin alphabet?

Thanks,
John
Rectangulars.JPG
578 x 128 - 14K

Comments

  • Luis DigitalLuis Digital Posts: 371
    edited 2011-09-12 18:44
    Hello,

    The most likely cause is a missing font on your system.

    Do you have a link to that page?
  • GordonMcCombGordonMcComb Posts: 3,366
    edited 2011-09-12 18:56
    These are replacement glyphs for missing or unprintable Unicode characters. Try here for more info:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specials_%28Unicode_block%29
  • $WMc%$WMc% Posts: 1,884
    edited 2011-09-12 19:00
    John_s
    '
    I've seen the google translator botch the ASCII code.
    '
    And some times I've seen this when converting Unicode to ASCII and vise versa.
    '
    Like Luis said above.
    '
    Check your font files.
    '
    Mr Comb brings up a good point.
    '
    http:/html:, does not use error checking.
    '
    This is a need for speed protocol,And if there was an error ,The protocol would just let the error fly.
    '
    '
    Hope this helps
  • john_sjohn_s Posts: 369
    edited 2011-09-12 20:03
    Luis Digital wrote: »
    Hello,

    The most likely cause is a missing font on your system.

    Do you have a link to that page?

    Here http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/echeeve1/Ref/Fourier/FourierBio.html

    As wikipedia points out "...U+FFFD �​ replacement character used to replace an unknown or unprintable character..."

    "...Check your font files " - where and how ?
    Which fonts is my pc missing - as obviously it is :-)
  • Mike GMike G Posts: 2,702
    edited 2011-09-12 23:04
    Try changing your browser encoding to Windows 1252 or Western Europe (Windows).

    HTML source. 
    <head>
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
  • Luis DigitalLuis Digital Posts: 371
    edited 2011-09-13 05:59
    I visited the site and I have problems also to see the text (question marks appear using FF on Linux).

    I see that the browser is using UTF-8, but the encoding is windows-1252, so I selected that encoding in my browser and now the text appears correctly.
    x/2 = sin x - (sin 2x)/2 + (sin 3x)/3 + · · ·
  • john_sjohn_s Posts: 369
    edited 2011-09-13 10:28
    I changed Firefox encoding from 'default' Unicode (UTF-8) to Western (Windows-1252) and it shows correctly.

    Thanks,
    John
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2011-09-13 10:39
    I was able to change it in Google Chrome "Tools>Encoding" to "windows-1252" and it works fine, also.
  • john_sjohn_s Posts: 369
    edited 2011-09-13 12:43
    NOT so fast - seems like Firefox knows better and keeps a Unicode (UTF-8) as a 'default'.

    So - is there a way to make Western (Windows-152) a sticky instead ?
  • Mike GMike G Posts: 2,702
    edited 2011-09-13 13:22
    @john_s, The page creator probably saved the page as UTF-8 but used a Microsoft character encoding (Windows-1252 or Western ISO-8859-1). FireFox is being told that the HTML file is UTF-8 not ISO-8859-1. More information about FireFox character encoding can be found in the help files.
  • john_sjohn_s Posts: 369
    edited 2011-09-13 21:44
    So it is a bug ... or nasty 'feature' in Firefox - as other people kept founding every now and then during last years already.

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158285

    "You can't. Firefox will switch the encoding to the value send by a web server in the HTTP response headers..."

    Oh well, I'm not going to spend any more time trying to make it 'think' otherwise ...
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