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#1 2007-11-03 19:13:27
- linguist
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- Registered: 2007-11-03
- Posts: 24
The neutral sound symbol for a linguistic site
Hello!
How can I show the transcription symbol for the neutral sound (the first sound in the word “about”, [ә]) on a Textpattern-powered site? The symbol I’m using now shows correctly in Firefox, but is represented as an empty square in IE6 and IE7. Thanks in advance for your help.
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Re: The neutral sound symbol for a linguistic site
What is the Unicode entity?
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#3 2007-11-03 21:21:03
- linguist
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- Registered: 2007-11-03
- Posts: 24
Re: The neutral sound symbol for a linguistic site
Unicode entity for the neutral sound [ə] is ə Will that help?
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Re: The neutral sound symbol for a linguistic site
Does the symbol in the “string.toLowerCase” row on this page display IE? It shows up for me in IE7. Wikipedia has some info on IE’s Unicode support:
Internet Explorer’s font substitution method sometimes fails to choose an appropriate font, and some characters may end up being displayed as blank squares or question marks. Web designers must guess which appropriate fonts may be present on users’ computers, and manually specify them for every change of Unicode block. —Criticism of Internet Explorer
So you might need to specify a specific font for the symbol.
Last edited by jm (2007-11-03 22:41:38)
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Re: The neutral sound symbol for a linguistic site
Atleast Arial, Trebuchet MS, Times New Roman, Georgia, Helvetica, Verdana and Tahoma should include that symbol. And because IE is Windows browser, all those fonts should come with Windows.
And secondly non-common fonts shouldn’t be used at all with websites – at their own at least, flash, background and images are for those fancy fonts – and they should be used only when needed, ie. in titles.
Cheers!
Last edited by Gocom (2007-11-03 23:23:40)
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#6 2007-11-04 08:33:52
- linguist
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- Registered: 2007-11-03
- Posts: 24
Re: The neutral sound symbol for a linguistic site
I use Times New Roman and Verdana, so the problem doesn’t seem to be with the font, if I understood you correctly, of course (I’m not a very technical person, unfortunately).
And “the symbol in the “string.toLowerCase” row on this page” in jm’s message above doesn’t display the neutral sound in IE6 or IE7 for me (blank squares for ALL representations of this sound on that page), but shows it correctly in Firefox. What do I do next? Please help.
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Re: The neutral sound symbol for a linguistic site
Well, the good news is it is system specific because it does display on the few IE7 installs I’ve tested (standard Windows XP installs). The bad news is obviously you and a portion of your visitors cannot see it. Using images is an option, but it’s not flexible, and it is a hassle.
Not sure where that leaves you. You could always include a misbehavior!
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