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Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
----- Forwarded message from Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net> -----
Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 14:56:19 +0200 From: Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net> Subject: lang="utf-8" makes Firefox use an ugly font To: editor@linuxgazette.net
Hello editor,
In the source of many of the HTML pages of the Linux Gazette, the <html> tag contains 'lang="utf-8" xml:lang="utf-8"'. This has the effect of making Firefox think that this is some exotic language and it falls back to a simple, smaller, uglier, unaliased font. For example on http://linuxgazette.net/150/index.html .
On http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ the W3 suggests that the <html> tag contain 'xml:lang="en" lang="en"'. When I replace the existing attributes with these, then the page gets shown fine for me.
(The possible reason that only I see this problem is that I've set Firefox to always use my chosen font and ignore the fonts of the Web site. This works fine on almost all Web sites. Only on Japanese sites and on Linux Gazette do I still get this ugly unaliased font.)
Regards,
Benno
----- End forwarded message -----
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 01:13:14PM -0400, Benjamin Okopnik wrote:
> > In the source of many of the HTML pages of the Linux Gazette, the > <html> tag contains 'lang="utf-8" xml:lang="utf-8"'. This has the > effect of making Firefox think that this is some exotic language > and it falls back to a simple, smaller, uglier, unaliased font. > For example on http://linuxgazette.net/150/index.html .
That's odd - my Firefox and my Mozilla browser from 'mozilla-suite' both display it just fine. Or perhaps I'm just used to ugly fonts everywhere - the LG site just looks normal to me.
> On http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ the W3 suggests that the <html> tag > contain 'xml:lang="en" lang="en"'. When I replace the existing > attributes with these, then the page gets shown fine for me. > > (The possible reason that only I see this problem is that I've set > Firefox to always use my chosen font and ignore the fonts of the > Web site. This works fine on almost all Web sites. Only on Japanese > sites and on Linux Gazette do I still get this ugly unaliased font.)
That sounds completely reasonable. Perhaps there's a better font you can use? Also, looking at my font setup in Firefox, I see that the 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts' box is checked - so you may well have spotted the problem right there.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Benno Schulenberg [bensberg at justemail.net]
Ben Okopnik wrote:
> On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 02:56:19PM +0200, Benno Schulenberg wrote: > > (The possible reason that only I see this problem is that I've > > set Firefox to always use my chosen font and ignore the fonts > > of the Web site. [...] ) > > That sounds completely reasonable. Perhaps there's a better font > you can use? Also, looking at my font setup in Firefox, I see > that the 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts' box is checked - > so you may well have spotted the problem right there.
Having the 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts' not checked was not the problem. When clicking on the 'Fonts for:' selection box, all the way down there's the choice "Other languages". For that item I had Times selected for Serif, Helvetica for Sans-serif, and Courier for Monospace. After selecting there the defaults, the Linux Gazette pages now display fine for me, in my chosen font.
Thanks for helping to clear this up.
However, I'd still like to suggest you replace "utf-8" in the 'lang' attributes with "en", because utf-8 is not a language, and the language the Linux Gazette pages are written in is English.
Regards,
Benno
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Quoting Benno Schulenberg (bensberg@justemail.net):
> However, I'd still like to suggest you replace "utf-8" in the 'lang' > attributes with "en", because utf-8 is not a language, and the > language the Linux Gazette pages are written in is English.
Vraiment? Toujours?
-- Cheers, (Regarding "In God we trust""Don't ask me how you set the Rick Moen trust-level of a god." "At a PGP signing party?" rick@linuxmafia.com -- Per Leijonhufvud & Peter de Silva, in ASR
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 01:18:23PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Benno Schulenberg (bensberg@justemail.net): > > > However, I'd still like to suggest you replace "utf-8" in the 'lang' > > attributes with "en", because utf-8 is not a language, and the > > language the Linux Gazette pages are written in is English. > > Vraiment? Toujours?
Да, grundsätzlich. 絶対.
Especially in those discussions about the Türkçe language that we had recently, or those bits of Russian that I (or Jimmy, who adds Polish to the mix) quote once in a while - or when we have authors like Anders Andreasen, who is the webmaster for the hydrogen storage facility at Risø... or even our own René Pfeiffer.
LG, for those Missing The Point (since I've carried the anvil this far...), is an international publication - and even more to the point, we get mail from people all over the world on a regular basis. Assuming that it's English-only mistakes the purpose and the point of this webzine. We're as international as the Linux community - and damned proud of it.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]
Hello,
On Sat, 17 May 2008, Ben Okopnik wrote:
> On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 01:18:23PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote: > > Quoting Benno Schulenberg (bensberg@justemail.net): > > > > > However, I'd still like to suggest you replace "utf-8" in the 'lang' > > > attributes with "en", because utf-8 is not a language, and the^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > language the Linux Gazette pages are written in is English. > > > > Vraiment? Toujours? > > Да, grundsätzlich. 絶対.
I think he was pointing out that utf-8 is not a language!
Benno: Linguistically speaking this you are correct in asserting that utf-8 is not a language but the attribute is "lang" not "language"!
The "lang" attribute refers to the encoding of an HTML page. Very often pages are encoded in a way that is specific to a certain language, which is why the attribute is called "lang".
Regards,
Kapil. --