[B-Greek] RE: Unicode vs. Older Software

Troy A. Griffitts scribe at crosswire.org
Thu Apr 14 06:05:26 EDT 2005


Hey guys,
	I'd like to give a little input, if it might help.  See link at bottom 
if you don't want to read this entire email.  We've done quite a bit of 
work getting Unicode working in our tools and from our website and I'd 
like to convey a little of what I've learned along the way:

	o UTF-8 certainly does not allow single byte characters > 127.  The 
first bit high designates a byte as part of a multibyte character. 
UTF-8 uses as many bytes as is necessary to represent the total bits 
necessary for the character number.  UTF-8 bytes usually carry a data 
payload of about 6 bits each, as the first 2 bits are used as control 
bits for multibyte characters.

	o Most browsers do their best to detect page encoding, but it's ALWAYS 
best to specify in the HTML.  Mozilla browsers (like firefox, netscape, 
mozilla) allow you to manually select the encoding (menu: View|Character 
Encoding).  When posting an HTML form (like a Search submit), usually a 
browser will be nice and convert the characters to a UTF-8 stream in the 
URL.  This means that the receiving page MUST EXPECT THE STREAM AS UTF-8 
and read it as such.

	o Oddly, Unicode Greek encoding is not very standard.  With Hebrew, 
everyone expected the extra work to compose consonants and vowels and 
accents, etc.  They've already done the work (well, mostly).  With 
Greek, there is a whole "Greek Extended" Unicode range defined 
containing precomposed characters.  Some renderers desire characters 
precomposed, others like to do the composing themselves.

	This last issue makes things a little problematic.  Most resources 
(including the ICU Unicode library) claim that canonical normal form is 
precomposed for Greek, and my firefox browser under linux looks great 
showing precomposed characters.  IE running on _stock_ XP looks 
horrible.  If one webpage has Greek precomposed characters, and someone 
enters a search string in decomposed characters, they obviously will not 
match, unless someone behind the curtain is being smart about things.

	
	I've spent some time tonight making 3 Bibles available on our site: 1) 
unaccented; 2) accented precomposed; 3) accented decomposed

	Here is a link which should show all 3 in parallel (you can click on 
words for definitions if you'd like :)  ).

http://crosswire.org/study/parallelstudy.jsp?add=WHNU&add=WHAC&add=WHACD


	We've specified in the HTML that the encoding is UTF-8 so all browsers 
have a fighting chance :)

	I hope this helps and wasn't a bunch of excess rambling.

	Blessings in this endeavour!

		-Troy A. Griffitts
		CrossWire Bible Society
		http://crosswire.org





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