This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: Netscape uses ??? instead of '''
From: vik@router.econz.co.nz
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 16:42:48 +1200
Whenever a web page has an apostrophe (') in it (or a strange charset
letter like an Umlaut), my RH6.1 Netscape machine displays a question
mark (?) instead. I have tried changing the character sets - even
importing the Tahoma TFF from my redundant Microsnot partition - but
Netscape still hasn?t{sic.} got the idea. Versions 4.x all do the same
thing, and if I print the page out the fault is still there.
So, how can I get a ' instead of a ? in Netscape?
===
Subject: Re: Netscape uses ??? instead of '''
From: "Michael R. Jinks" <mjinks@uchicago.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 23:54:21 -0500
Others may know better, but I've been told that this is not really a Netscape
or a *n*x problem, but a (wait for it...) MicroSoft problem.
Apparently, if you use a MicroSoft application to generate text, it has this
"smart quotes" feature which will replace a pair of ' characters, for example,
with ` at the beginning and ' at the end. Regrettably for the rest of us,
M$ chose to do that by substituting non-ASCII characters in their places.
Embrace and extend.
Or something like that.
The umlaut problem may be something different; I am able to view umlauts and
other non-English characters in both terminal-based apps and in Netscape, most
of the time at least, so not sure what your trouble may be in that regard.
===
Subject: Re: Netscape uses ??? instead of '''
From: Vidiot <brown@mrvideo.vidiot.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 00:02:09 -0500 (CDT)
Whenever a web page has an apostrophe (') in it (or a strange charset
>letter like an Umlaut), my RH6.1 Netscape machine displays a question
>mark (?) instead. I have tried changing the character sets - even
>importing the Tahoma TFF from my redundant Microsnot partition - but
>Netscape still hasn?t{sic.} got the idea. Versions 4.x all do the same
>thing, and if I print the page out the fault is still there.
>
>So, how can I get a ' instead of a ? in Netscape?
*** RANT MODE ON ***
You get the idiots that insist on using MicroSh!t web page preparation
programs to throw them in the trash. The problem is that Bill Gate's
shitty (and I'm being polite) system places at least three characters
in the ASCII control character section, i.e., decimal 0 through decimal 31.
The apostrophe, open and close double-quotes are placed in the ^R, ^S and
^T ASCII characters. Netscape, following Unix rules for characters sets,
doesn't know what to do with those control characters, so it displays a
question mark.
Why Bill Gates and his minions believe that they have the right to redo
the ASCII character set is beyond me, other than they are a$$ wipes who
believe they are god.
Am I pissed about this? You bet. I'm getting sick and tired of looking
at web pages that are character set encoded incorrectly. Of course, you'll
never be able to convince the idiots that use Gate's shitty platform to
create web pages, that there is anything wrong, since they look OK on their
computer. They just don't care.
Unfortunately, the only cure I know of is to get the Netscape programmers
to write in code that converts those three characters into the correct
characters. But that means that Gates and his minions win again.
*** RANT MODE OFF ***
===
Subject: Re: Netscape uses ??? instead of '''
From: "Michael R. Jinks" <mjinks@uchicago.edu>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 00:10:13 -0500
On Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 12:02:09AM -0500, Vidiot wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, the only cure I know of is to get the Netscape programmers
> to write in code that converts those three characters into the correct
> characters. But that means that Gates and his minions win again.
Yeah, and that anything which tries to use the control codes for some legit
purpose will get fouled up...
...bastards...
===
Subject: Re: Netscape uses ??? instead of ''
From: "Anthony E . Greene" <agreene@pobox.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 05:43:04 -0400
On 13 Sep 2000 01:02 Statux wrote:
>Now with Netscape using ???'s.. where are you talking about.. I'm not sure
>we're talking about the same thing.. you're talking about Word files and
>crap which shouldn't be used in the same sentence as UNIX, etc.
Any plain text or HTML file created with a Microsoft editor,
or with many other editors running on Windows, an
apostrophe/single quote is not handled correctly. It is
saved as some character whose ASCII code is above
127. Netscape displays such characters as question marks.
This only happens when the file is created on Windows. You can view such
plain text or HTML a file in the UNIX/Linux editor of your choice to see the
problem.
===