"Brion Vibber" wrote
Is there a problem with rendering those characters, or is it just that standard system fonts don't include them? If the latter, are there free fonts we could recommend to people?
I've done some more research this morning, and below is what I have found. The following discussion is fairly technical, so I've cross-posted to wikitech-l, and we should probably continue the thread there if discussion remains this technical.
The Windows font "Lucida Sans Unicode" has all the Unicode IPA Extensions, except for #686 "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK" and #687 "LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK AND TAIL", which are apparently only used for some obscure branch of Chinese phonetics. In other words, it has a complete set for almost all useful purposes. Additionally, Lucida Sans Unicode seems to be included with most recent flavors of Windows that I have encountered, although I could be wrong. I haven't done any Mac testing yet because I am at work and my Mac is at home.
Secondly, Windows IE can be coerced into displaying the page
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_of_disputed_pronunciation/IPA
correctly by going to Tools -> Internet Options... -> Fonts... and selecting Lucida Sans Unicode as "Web page font".
Furthermore, if a <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode'"> tag is placed around any IPA text, the IPA will be displayed correctly regardless of what the font setting for "Web page font" is. Of course this also works if e.g. if the line
.ipa { font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode" }
is included in the page's stylesheet and the <span> tag has class="ipa".
However, I don't seem to be able to put arbitrary <span> tags onto Wikipedia pages, so I can't fix up [[List of words of disputed pronunciation/IPA]] to display correctly by default in IE. I can insert <div>s though, so I'm sure allowing <span>s is an easy fix. (For those who don't know, a <span> is like a <div> except it doesn't make a new paragraph, so it is the best way to change text style mid-paragraph)
So, what I think could be done immediately is to add the .ipa class to the stylesheet and make some kind of wiki syntax to put <span class="ipa"> tags around text in IPA, or least allow them to be manually added. This will probably make most IPA text work correctly for many more browsers than can currently view it.
Also, I agree that every instance, if not just the on each page, of IPA text should have a link to a "IPA for English" page so people who are unfamiliar with IPA can quickly figure out how to decipher it. I will write that page write away.
- David