Re: [ARSCLIST] Diacriticals (was Re: [ARSCLI ST] Siegfried Borries and Johannes Schueler/ Schü l er)

[stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Francesco Martinelli" <fmartinelli@xxxxxx>
> > Furthermore, using letters instead of diacriticals allows information to
> > file in a uniform manner- German, Danish, etc.
>
> Being interested in filing Turkish recordings, I'd like to know if/how the
> problem has been solved elsewhere - or suggestions.
> A few problems I have encountered are:
> 1. Pre-republican records bear indications in Ottoman script (a mixture of
> arabic and persian) and transliterations in French, German, or English. It
> is of course possible to transliterate in Modern Turkish as well, granting
> compatibility with subsequent issues.
> 2. There are no uniform letters to be used instead of diacriticals for
some
> Modern Turkish letters (yumusak g, or a g with a v on top, and dotless
> i/dotted I).
> 3. Usage of correct modern Turkish letters on a website (possible)
> guarantees uniformity and compatibility within Turkish users, but turns up
> on most users' computers as a bunch of funny symbols.
> 4. Usage of the closest sign does not guarantee compatibility, does not
help
> in reading, and doesn't look good either.
>
The only way to ensure that text is properly displayed on a web
page is to create images containing the text. Beyond that, browsers
operating under Windows use the Windows character set (all 255) which
means that they may or  may not display as expected. It is possible,
of course, to specify ant non-standard character set used...but this
often requires the viewer to download that set if he/she/it does not
have it installed.

E-mail is even worse...it consists of only the basic set of 127
characters and the first 32 of those are "control characters"
and generally long since obsolete. MIME allows the transmission
of "high-order" (128-255) characters, but there is no guarantee
how these will be displayed on the receiving machine...

Steven C. Barr