Tech Note: Diacritic Characters

At PZ's suggestion, I've twiddled some knobs behind the scenes to force the blog to speak utf-8 instead of iso-8859-1. This will hopefully allow you guys to write even stranger comments than usual. Maybe I'll even be able to stop writing stuff like "& a u m l ;" Please try it out! Såy sömëthïng ïn Swëdïsh! Mattias, have you any lewd suggestions to make in Koiné Greek? Is anyone able to rattle off a few lines of Arabic love poetry? Go nuts, y'all!

More like this

I've hinted before that I've been puttering away at a book, and the latest hint is that there is a possibility of some very serious interest in it—no promises yet, merely the whisper of potential, but still…this could be a big step. At the same time, that potential comes with things like serious…
Some of the scienceblogs have been experiencing difficulties (unresponsiveness, sluggish commenting, and some of us can't even post), and part of the problem can be traced to spammers turning their attention to us and pounding at the door. We've been asked to increase the level of security in…
Over the last couple of days, I've considered posting something on the controversy that's been sparked by PZ Myers' comments about the eucharist, and the reaction of Bill Donohue and the Catholic League to those comments. I've been putting it off because it's not an easy post for me to write. The…
It's probably a little foolish to continue this on a Saturday, but I'd like to wrap up the giant framing/ religion/ screechy monkeys mess and get back to more pleasant topics, at least for a while. Putting it off until Monday would make this more visible, but it would also drag things out, so I'm…

I didn't know PZ was a Motörhead (or is it Mötley Crüe?) fan!

Was it knob twiddling or more ÏαÏανιδÏθηι?

(Warning non-swedes, gobbledegook ahead)

Tröjan har jag lyckats missa fullständigt. Vansinnigt ful och rolig logga dock.

"Tröjan" var skoj!

æ¥æ¬èªã§èª¬æããããããã¬ã¸ã£ã³ãã£ã¦ã¹ã´ã§ã¼ãã³èªã§ããã®ã»ã¼ã¿ã¼ãã¨ããæå³ã ã

Let's see...

ââ
â
â
ââº

Hah! It strips out the non-breaking spaces! (at least in preview mode).

By Peter Lund (not verified) on 11 Mar 2008 #permalink

ââ
 â
 â
 ââº

Hah! It strips out the non-breaking spaces! (at least in preview mode).

(replacing with ampersand nbsp semicolon + not going into preview)

By Peter Lund (not verified) on 11 Mar 2008 #permalink

So U+00A0 gets stripped out but nbsp stays. I can live with that. Now, if only I could enforce monotype... Maybe a code tag will work?

ââ
 â
 â
 ââº

By Peter Lund (not verified) on 11 Mar 2008 #permalink

Didn't work.

Men tusind tak -- tack så mycket -- for at du gad gøre arbejdet, når nu seed ikke gad :)

I øvrigt, siden du som jeg selv både læser WulffMorgenthaler og Skalk (min farmor har en komplet samling helt fra starten og ubrudt hele vejen ind til for et par år siden og jeg har læst dem alle!) så vil du måske synes om det her:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C84WFzBMugQ

En 15-årig knægt fra Jylland som ikke selv ved hvor god han er -- og som hørte sangen (Kiss from a Rose) for første gang fem dage før showet.

Jeg kan også anbefale Lisas udgave af Crazy og Heidis udgave af Verden er i farver fra samme show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1efvoS59Ms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSb5WeRFEs0

By Peter Lund (not verified) on 11 Mar 2008 #permalink

á»á á³á¹á«á¦ á¦á«á á»á áá¢áá á©á¾ á¦á«á ááªá¾áá á¾á©á±á¦á¹ááªá±áá¢á á¹áᦠá¦áª á¹áá¥á«

(Old English, which transcribed into Latin reads 'He cwaeth that he bude thaem lande northweardum with tha Westsae.' and means 'He said that he lived in the northern land near the Western Sea.')

Taken from one of my test files, which I believe originates from the Linux UTF-8 FAQ.

ÏοÏε διηνοιξεν αÏÏÏν Ïον νοÏν ÏÎ¿Ï ÏÏνιεναι ÏÎ±Ï Î³ÏαÏαÏ

/ Mattias

Seems the diacritics situation here has improved considerably but is still not ideal. The Scandy characters work well, which takes care of most of the problems.

The evermost silly play with characters, even more so than that of certain 80:s metal groups, must be the american ice-cream company Häagen-Dazs. Apparently the company took its name in order to convey 'european quality' to the transatlantic market. A canadian gentleman once told me that the only word he knew in Danish was 'Häagen-Dazs', insisting that it meant 'quality dairy product'! The ice-cream is superb, however, and popular also in Europe these days.

/ Mattias

Hopefully this might make the above comment make sense to non-swedish speakers as well.

Skor - Plural of shoe
Skör - Fragile/brittle

How about this guy: ä¸è¹ æé ?

Maybe the person who put an umlaut on "Skor" had some knowledge of german and believed that all germanic languages used these funny letters to produce pluralis (thus making a false connection between, for example, "Mann"-"Männer" and "Sko"-"Skör")?

/ Mattias

I think we should avoid the temptation to anthropomorphise the Canadians, attributing a level of rationality to them of which there really is very little evidence.