Wikipedia-l November 2003

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71 participants
98 discussions

Switching everything to UTF-8
by Daniel Mayer 18 Nov '03

18 Nov '03

Peter wrote: >Not at all! It clearly shows what happens when a page >_IS_ 8859-1 encoded but editors want to use fancy >characters. Same hppens when they do it with an old >browser on UTF-8 pages. So, you get trash either way, >other editors revert the same way, so you may well >use utf-8, don't you? :-) OIC. Well a person should /not/ be using fancy things like curly quotes and long hyphens because many browsers (especially on non-MS systems) display them as question makes. These should be fixed, not allowed to propagate. The fact that some browsers break these codes should be a good hint that they should not be used to begin with (esp. since ASCII quotes and regular hyphens can be used instead). But a way around the larger issue is to sniff whether or not a browser is UTF-8-aware and then serve a page in either UTF-8 or in Latin-1 (whatever the ISO) based on that. When a UTF-8 page is displayed it shows the actual non-Latin characters, when the Latin-1 page is displayed it shows the codes the represent those characters. That at least will prevent pages from getting damaged, but the special characters will still show up as question marks for people with older browsers, so things like curly quotes and long hyphens should be automatically converted to their ASCII counterparts. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree

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On browsers, UTF-8 and attitude.
by Ralesk Ne'vennoyx 18 Nov '03

18 Nov '03

Mav said the following quoted text: >Well a person should /not/ be using fancy things >like curly quotes and long hyphens because many >browsers (especially on non-MS systems) display them >as question makes. I expect a couple typographists to get serious heart problems from that. >These should be fixed, not allowed >to propagate. Please! Let's all return to the 6-bit ASCII set, everything else is bloat, and unsupported by older systems. >The fact that some browsers break these >codes should be a good hint that they should not be >used to begin with (esp. since ASCII quotes and >regular hyphens can be used instead). Just as I said above. Also, from another post: >When I see "You need to >upgrade your browser" I leave and never come back. Please, also, keep your Netscape 4 and watch it break every standard and recommendation that W3C proposed. You may also try things with NetPositive and the likes, which are though newer, but support /nothing/. Hell, lynx and (e)links do better at 'splaying a page. And indeed, if your browser, or whoever's browser SUCKS, then sorry, compile a links. It's shouldn't be /that/ hard, especially for hardcore users of heavily outdated servermonsters (which are, granted, otherwise quite good). Unicode is the Present. Live With It™. -- "Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix." (Torvalds to Tanenbaum) -- Ralesk Ne'vennoyx [ICQ:37046326]

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] UTF-8 - idea (maybe stupid, from a non-tech dreamer :-)
by Anthere 18 Nov '03

18 Nov '03

>From: Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> >Mav, do you have a constructive suggestion for improving >compatibility >with older browsers? If so, please post it on >wikitech-l, where we're >discussing the issue. We already know you don't like the >idea of >breaking older browsers. He does not like because that is unnice to newbies, and that generates bad vibes between oldbies (does that exist ?) as well. I am glad I do not break pages any more, either because of utf (Opera), or because of the cut at 30 ko (Opera), or by the freezing editing window (IE) or by the random spaces additions in words (Netscape 4). I still mess with html though :-) An idea (perhaps totally stupid), would it be possible that *some* pages are in utf, while most are not. So, the pages that could benefit utf (such as the list or arabic terms or such) are in utf, perhaps with a box to check when saving. and the others are left as is. Vincent et al could work nicely, most readers would perhaps see more things, but the pages where problems would occur would be limited ? Is that possible ? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Switching everything to UTF-8
by Anthere 18 Nov '03

18 Nov '03

Tomasz- > * broken browsers - they should be upgraded, if someone has browser so old > that it doesn't grok UTF-8, it's not going to grok CSS, > PNGs, and other things we're using either. > Unless we want to remove all CSS and PNGs, there's > no point in not using UTF-8. Is this true? All I know is that we had a *lot* of problems with broken special chars on the Meta-Wiki during the logo contest. I have no idea which browser broke them, but it seems to be a not totally uncommon one, perhaps in the 5% range. Given that a single edit by such a person will break an entire page, it might not be so wise to switch (but perhaps I'm missing something -- is Meta running UTF-8?). Regards, Erik I confirm it is in utf 8 I broke many pages for months there, and refrained from editing many others, and wrote all french pages without any accents. I also noticed during the logo contest, that some people were messing pages as well, so obviously some people are still using them (recommand Netscape 7 for Mac OS 9). I really fear we will have to check very carefully any newbie contribution, and perhaps tell them to go away. I hope we consider this carefully, before switching everything. I understand there would be some benefits. But perhaps some drawbacks as well. Any relevant number (of non utf supporting browser) might be interesting. Imho. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree

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Switching everything to UTF-8
by Daniel Mayer 18 Nov '03

18 Nov '03

Brion wrote: >Mav, do you have a constructive suggestion for >improving compatibility with older browsers? If so, >please post it on wikitech-l, where we're discussing >the issue. We already know you don't like the idea of >breaking older browsers. I don't care about breaking old browsers, I care about breaking articles and not being at least minimally accessable to people who use old browsers. One thing is certain, however: Switching to UTF-8 will not improve compatibility with old browsers or improve the experience of the people who use them. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Switching everything to UTF-8
by Daniel Mayer 18 Nov '03

18 Nov '03

Erik wrote: >Is this true? All I know is that we had a *lot* of problems >with broken special chars on the Meta-Wiki during the logo >contest. I have no idea which browser broke them, but it >seems to be a not totally uncommon one, perhaps in the >5% range. Given that a single edit by such a person will >break an entire page, it might not be so wise to switch >(but perhaps I'm missing something -- is Meta running UTF-8?). IIRC meta is. And that fact has created some of the problems you mention. I therefore see no compelling need to convert Latin-1 languages to UTF-8 and in fact think such a switch would be harmful. It is also wrong-headed to state (as Tomasz did) that if people have non-UTF-8-friendly browsers that they should upgrade. That is not the attitude we should have when things work just fine the way they are (at least on the English Wikipedia - others may have more compelling reasons to use UTF-8 that outweigh the negatives). The only place where UTR-8 would be very useful is with interlanguage links. But that could better be solved by placing all interlanguage links outside of the regular wiki text of pages. That separate edit window could support UTF-8 and be shared by all Wikipedia's. This should minimize damage done by non-UTF-8-compliant browsers and as an added benefit could be part of an easier way to add language links to articles (inputing the links once would create language links in every article listed in the common meta space). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Switching everything to UTF-8
by Daniel Mayer 18 Nov '03

18 Nov '03

Tomasz wrote: >1. >There are many reasons other than interwiki. ISO 8859-1 is >broken by design - it doesn't even encode all Latin characters, >and other characters are also needed for correct Latin-script >typography. Oh, which ones? All the Latin characters on my keyboard work just fine. Extended Latin characters also work fine. If you want anything more fancy then use &code;. >2. >Things are NOT fine the way they are. At least not for English >Wikipedia. That begs the question. What is wrong? >3. >And, as I said, we already break compatibility with very old >browsers in many ways. Or do you maybe want to ban all PNGs, >OGGs etc., and implement some converter from CSS to HTML3- >compatible markup ? Come on. Not being able to view PNGs, OGGs, fancy CSS tricks and HTML-3 only stuff does not harm any article. However, somebody using an older browser can really screw-up an article on at UTF-8 page. This already happens fairly often on meta, even though meta has very low traffic compared with en.wikipedia. You cannot compare the two. UTF-8 is a non-starter for en.wikipedia, and probably for most other Latin-based wikis as well. But the choice of charset should be up to each wiki and that choice should reflect the needs of that wiki. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Getting rid of admin status
by Karl Eichwalder 17 Nov '03

17 Nov '03

Please help me to get rid of the so called Admin status (German WP). Who is able to tweak the database system accordingly? -- | ,__o | _-\_<, http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/ | (*)/'(*)

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bank balances
by Jimmy Wales 17 Nov '03

17 Nov '03

SunTrust account is unchanged since last update, unless some bank fees were charged: $1,862.23 Paypal has various amounts in various currencies, with a USD value of $1,533.20 -- this is up just over $200 from the last time I reported, 1 week ago. I can absolutely that removing the donation text from all the pages has resulted in a significant drop in incoming funds, as expected. --Jimbo

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RE: [Wikitech-l] Server update
by Poor, Edmund W 17 Nov '03

17 Nov '03

Thanks for arranging this, Jimbo. I'm not sure everyone realizes how much of a sacrifice in time and money it is, for Jimbo to do all the shopping and follow-up - and for him to send employees of Bomis to set up equipment. Ed Poor

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Wikipedia-l November 2003