From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1LmURB-0001EV-S0 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:50:38 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 75BECE077A; Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:50:36 +0000 (UTC) Received: from qw-out-1920.google.com (qw-out-1920.google.com [74.125.92.145]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4F5CCE077A for ; Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:50:36 +0000 (UTC) Received: by qw-out-1920.google.com with SMTP id 5so47922qwc.10 for ; Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:50:36 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:sender:received:in-reply-to :references:date:x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=8maY+z9aTbULmTQOeWM4SA/sIFYb+u1cAuZlanmoURM=; b=Lv2XdXc6HHeQdSJ30hsxJbEy2GmNLGYWwLgYP4VgkrRTPdx02GyE8EmWbOzwLe6zRA OnxuQ2Jff1HxsTXEw0XsFuvVZGaQZ6ag907DZnw/Kb5FokvBulTljq3rBVK155g1kAO6 9DiJzOgpIgehWgr9aJR3oaiCwkgl9nfg47hNo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date :x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=p/7p9Sq+PWJb69GxTv52skIvVFby9QF2Y9Gw2x2ecAzSfgZupwjIWXtVNVSwHsxdua 5GeSRAfArEflRz2t2ASOlfB88p1FodX8WltaIm21IVAvMrcQDQtRhc/ojxVkZD8r7Ucu zV3wvgwsuM2A5SAN2pgim+vFI9siZOa1zz3Qk= Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: paul.hartman@gmail.com Received: by 10.224.46.16 with SMTP id h16mr12651788qaf.22.1237992635851; Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:50:35 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <9acccfe50903250702y7f6869f0xfd0e28002d4ca9c0@mail.gmail.com> References: <9acccfe50903250702y7f6869f0xfd0e28002d4ca9c0@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:50:35 -0500 X-Google-Sender-Auth: 092c283eab45c40d Message-ID: <58965d8a0903250750t5f835b5ar999498ecec078bae@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Browsers not seeing symbol font From: Paul Hartman To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 288c61da-57eb-42d9-a286-c513a190d221 X-Archives-Hash: 78cfe20dadb5e2d17a6481a43047237e On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote: > I have discovered that the symbol font does not render reliably in > browsers. Only one of my audience (of about a dozen people) could see > the font properly, in a variety of browsers. The one who could is > using Firefox, and I have not been able to determine what makes this > one special -- I do not have access to that machine to check out > configurations. > > I have a very simple HTML example at > http://www.kosmanor.com/~kevin/symbol.html. By rights it should show > "The quick brown fox" transliterated into greek letters. On most > browsers set up for English, it seems to come out in latin letters, > but there are no latin letter in that font, although these same > browsers honor requests for a variety of other fonts. This is true > even on some machines that definitely have the symbol font, and it's > usable in word processing documents. > > Of course, that sample page is ancient HTML, but the problem first > surfaced in HTML email being received on a much more sophisticated > page by Yahoo Mail. > > There's a lot I don't know about character encodings, i18n and the > rest, but this still seems discrimination against the symbol font. > Any clues out there? 1. "Symbol" is not a defined CSS font family. Your choices are: serif, sans-serif, cursive, fantasy, monospace. 2. Character encodings are easy: use Unicode. :) http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html 3. Because neither your HTML nor your HTTP headers declare which character encoding the page uses, it is left up to the browser to make that decision (which obviously causes unpredictable results). You should really define this. 4. Similarly, check the character encoding setting on the browser to make sure it's not forcing it to be wrong. Firefox also has options to allow or disallow the page from using its own fonts, etc. 5. Make sure the requisite fonts exist on the viewer's computer and is properly installed.