If I send the html-message e.g. to the IVRIT-group, who's members work on all kinds of systems, I do not want them to have problems reading and printing my mail. Any remedy on the horizon?
Use plain text e-mail, or HTML e-mail generated by your mail client (including Mozilla, Outlook or Outlook Express). Don't try to paste in HTML from Word.
But there is still no guarantee of success, sadly. There are people who resolutely refuse to update their mail systems, and a smaller number who are unable to do so.
I have the problem of many recipients of my e-mail: In the University's Computer Science Department they are very good to have the latest Linux-sofware running. The unicode or UTF-8 encoded mail arrives but the composed characters are displayed by Mozilla as a sequence of marks after the base-character. Even ooffice113.exe on XP generated files, carried to the Linux-system, and displayed by ooffice is not displaying the same combinations as under XP, printing is much worse.
I have to find rpm-packages of unicode fonts an the administrators promise to install them. But none of them are as complete as Arial Unicode MS most have not yet the combining diacritiacals.
I would like to support you on NBSP, request a RtL-space and add some corrections to the 1st & 2nd Hebrew-block (vowel-points do not combine with Hebrew-accents under the basic consonants and 2nd-block complex characters do not combine with accents or vowels!).
The complex Elaine's Samaritan symbols should also be combinable out of simple base-character and 2 diacritics.
I like the idea of combining our efforts.
Agreed. But we need to be sure that problems are with the standard, and not only with certain implementations of it.
Did you make a formal proposal for NBSP, as Elaine did for Samaritan ?
I have studied unicode's uniqueness-rules, bidi-algorithm and many others and feel almost overwhelmed by finding new types of rules that might have a bearing on a particular combining sequence. Is there no UTC-place or person to whom one can just describe a practical problem and hear if there are any rules that will ensure better solutions in the future.
Some of the answers I got to my questions show that very knowledgeable people are in this group, and some of them have similar problems with getting any 'official' response.
I think that Unicode is only crowning, i.e. has not yet been completely born, if official communication with the UTC is restricted to US-ascii-mail.
Peter RM
