Special Characters

[karmadog]

I am writing a story that, from necessity, uses some french words. As you know, many french words have accents: the little slash going either way above the letter, and sometimes the "c" with the bottom of a 5 hanging from it.

My question is this: How do I add these characters? (Windows 98, Works) If I add them, willl they show up on the site? Should I bother? I am not writing in french just using the words for flavor and authenticity.

 

[Weird Harold]

If I add them, willl they show up on the site? Should I bother? I am not writing in french just using the words for flavor and authenticity.

My copy of MS Word is set up to add the accents to words like 'Fiancee' as part of the spell check of "foreign words."

Depending on how you submit the story, they can show up properly on the site, although you may need to manually code the special characters in HTML if you cut and paste into the submission form. (é = "small e, acute accent")

Without using the HTML codes, accented characters often show up as strange characters or blank spaces in some browsers.

 

[Quint]

WH, I'm trying my hand at the HTML thing. Bear with me if I mess up. Do you know the HTML for a tilde (~) over an n? After I return from Mexico I might get some kicks out of writing a Non-English story, and I'd really need to know that sort of thing.

Where d'you do the HTML for the e with the accent, or the rest of it for that matter? It didn't work as I did it. Hmph.

 

[Weird Harold]

WH, I'm trying my hand at the HTML thing. Bear with me if I mess up. Do you know the HTML for a tilde (~) over an n? After I return from Mexico I might get some kicks out of writing a Non-English story, and I'd really need to know that sort of thing.

Where d'you do the HTML for the e with the accent, or the rest of it for that matter? It didn't work as I did it. Hmph.

If you submit a text file, or cut and paste into the text box of the submission form, then you can add some HTML formatting.

A Tilde-n is Ñ or &ntilde, depending on whether you want a captial or lower case.

I use HTML for duummies as a quick reference for special HTML characters, although I'm sure there's a list of codes online somewhere you could print out as a reference.

 

[karmadog]

Apparently my copy of Win98 is monoglot. It understands only American English and British English. If it knows anymore, it's not talkin'. The damn thing doesn't even understand Southern English.

 

[jon.hayworth]

Karmadog,

That is the problem with MS Works, try to get yourself a copy of MS Office for the Word even if it is an old version - I am using an antiquated Office 95 on my ME operating system but it is superior to the Works that was supplied with the computer.

The alternative is to install the freedownload Star Office 5.2 - Sun Microsystems equivelant to MS Office and still more versatile than Works. Or they sell the disk in the UK it is less than UKP30. Not sure what it costs anywhere else.

jon

 

[Alex De Kok]

Accented characters

All is not lost for users of Works and the like, at least not for submissions. First, look at my How-To on using bold and italic in your submissions, for general background. Then go to www.w3schools.com. There you will find a lot of information on Web pages. Towards the right of the screen is a column headed References. You want the one headed Entity Reference.

When you want to include your accented characters, you will need to include the entity reference for the character, instead of using the < and > to surround the relevant section of your masterpiece.

Thus, for Quint to include her lower case n with tilde, say in the Spanish for canyon, she will have to use the code for the relevant letter(s). I've been frustrated trying to show an example as the BB interprets the code correctly, and my demo shoots itself in the foot. Any way, for canyon in Spanish use c a & # 2 4 1 o n - but omit the spaces between the characters! This will give ca&#241on, which is what is wanted, I think.

Note 1: use the entity number, rather than the entity name. Using c a & n t i l d e o n just gives ca&ntildeon!

Note 2: This advice is intended only for those intending to submit via their member page by cutting and pasting into the submission box.

Alex

Later: Blunder! I missed a ; off!

c a & n t i l d e ; o n does give cañon (without the spaces of course!)

Alex

 

[karmadog]

I think, being a gigantic idiot, I'll just leave them unaccented. Too much work for both me and Laurel.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Don't go that way, karmadog!!!

html language has little to do with ñ, ã, ç, è, ï ú or any kind of characters... If you don't know how to type them in, use the characters map from Word, or something... If you really can't manage it, just send me the text and I'll do it for you!

(Damn you guys are hopeless, my keyboard has the same number of keys as yours, and check this out: سيشمايشايلئلاءءش )

 

[Weird Harold]

Don't go that way, karmadog!!!

html language has nothing to do with ñ, ã, ç, è, ï ú or any kind of characters...

Using the HTML codes insures that more than windows based machines can see the accented characters. I often see strange characters or the wrong special characters displayed because people depend on what their machine displays being what every machine displays.

The reason HTML has special codes for accented characters is because there is no standard assignments for those characters in various fonts and word processing programs.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Just look at all the non-english stories posted in this site, and even some english (i'm thinking, for example, in the some stories posted by Tolkien fans) do you really believe they had that much trouble posting the damned thing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but html language wasn't even invented by english speakers!

 

[Lauren Hynde]

The reason HTML has special codes for accented characters is because there is no standard assignments for those characters in various fonts and word processing programs.

But that's not really an issue here, since there are only so many fonts you can make your submissions with, and all of them cover the latin "special" (from your point of view) characters...

 

[Weird Harold]

But that's not really an issue here, since there are only so many fonts you can make your submissions with, and all of them cover the latin "special" (from your point of view) characters...

Specifically, Literotica uses "<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">" in formatting stories. All are standard Windows fonts. MAC, Linux, or other systems may or may not implement the same fonts in the same way. HTML codes for special characters are defined to make sure that the right characters are displayed.

Special characters ARE an issue here, because there have been several cases of stories appearing corrupted because special characters were used without notifying Laurel there were special formatting needs in the story. NOT using the HTML codes results in unpredictable and unreliable presentation of special characters.

Special charcters are not limited to accented characters BTW. Things like Smart Quotes, ellipses, and long dashes that Word does automatically also cause strange characters to display when converted to text and/or HTML.

 

[Closet Desire]

Quick and dirty...

Although I don't think this really applies to doing things in HTML I've found Windows "special characters" procedure to be a royal pain. Instead I still have a printout of upper ASCII characters next to my desk so I can hold the Alt key and enter the four digit code for what I want. Let's see Alt-0169 is ©. Depending on which character set you installed on Windows it will cover most of the languages you need for flavour.

So Alt-0241 is ñ and Alt-0209 is Ñ.

Comes in handy for Brontë which I have spell a lot (Alt-0235)

Ain't it fun?

Oh, c with a squiggle tail is Alt-135 ç and, apparently, they show up on the site.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

You guys do realize that they have internet in France, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Hungary and Turky and in none of those places this issues are placed, don't you? Seriously, In this particular case we're talking about people who want to post stories in eigther french or spanish, in a windows standard font. I know for a fact that Macs will have no problem (and I'm not talking about © type characters, the issue has always been the accented characters). I personally don't believe that there are that many Linux out there unable to display them eigther and if there are, why the hell are they trying to read something in French in the first place?

I just think that if the choice is, like karmadog said, between leaving them unaccented and displaying the right characters, even if a small minority will not be able to see them, I'd go with the second any day of the week! Most of them wouldn't understand what was written anyway!

 

[Closet Desire]

Yes...

...however each machine has a set of characters for native language that it has been set to default to. Our artist is currently in the middle of producing translated materials in a number of different languages on his Mac. All it requires is having the character sets available. If you access characters not on your machine over the web it only requires that you load the character sets onto your machine.

The upper ASCII codes aren't anything magic either--they are just a way of directly doing what your computer is doing for you. In fact, your regular characters are part of the same set. It's just that if your keyboard is set up for UK English (different from US English) there aren't enough keys to support the full set hence the upper ascii set. The computer doesn't actually know the characters as particular letters--it only knows 0's and 1's. When desktop publishing first came on in the early 80's we relied heavily on the ASCII codes to do the job properly.

And...more of us understand languages other than English than you might realise.

 

[Alex De Kok]

Closet desire said

Although I don't think this really applies to doing things in HTML I've found Windows "special characters" procedure to be a royal pain. Instead I still have a printout of upper ASCII characters next to my desk so I can hold the Alt key and enter the four digit code for what I want. Let's see Alt-0169 is ©. Depending on which character set you installed on Windows it will cover most of the languages you need for flavour.

So Alt-0241 is ñ and Alt-0209 is Ñ.

I'll repeat what I said in my earlier post - go to www.w3schools.com and print off the Entities Reference if you want the HTML codes for the accented characters. You'll find that the number parts of the codes correspond to those quoted by Closet Desire. The site also has the basic ASCII codes for HTML as well.

Alex

 

[karmadog]

Thank you all so much! I can't get over how helpful you have been. I'm going to try to get the characters right. Hopefully, Lauren will have no problem dealing with my beginner's ignorance.