Diacritics don't display with Internet Explorer

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 17.01

Description:
Diacritics don't display properly using Internet Explorer.

Resolution:
You need to do the following in an IE browser session:

1) click on Tools --Internet options --Fonts and for "Web-based font" select "Arial Unicode MS". Click OK; then OK again.

2) click on Tools --Internet options --Accessibility; check the "Ignore font styles specified on Web pages" box, if not already checked. Click OK; then OK again.

3) click on View --Encoding and select "Unicode".

Or you can can code this on the server (so your patrons won't need to bother): In the ./www_f_eng/exlibris.css (or /aleph.css) change the "td1" section to have Arial Unicode MS first, like this:

.td1 ...
font-family:'Arial Unicode MS' ...

And the same for the "text3" section.

If you don't have the Arial Unicode MS font on your PC, please consult KB# 8192-728.


[From Paul Aloisio at Harvard, Dec, 2004:] One useful resource is: http://www.unicode.org/help/display_problems.html

We also have a section on browser display issues in the help for our catalog: http://hollis.harvard.edu

One thing I have discovered with IE (as opposed to Mozilla/Netscape) is that it is not possible to define a Unicode fixed width font in IE. That means that some non-Roman (ones with diacritics, but not CJK characters) will not display correctly in forms presented in IE. It also means that text files displayed through IE will not display some non-Roman characters correctly, but if you save the file, and use a program that has the MS Arial Unicode font available, the characters display just fine.

Mozilla organizes its font selection preferences differently. You choose the general category first (Unicode, Western, Cyrillic, etc.), and then within that category, you chose the type of font (proportional, serif, non-serif, mono-spaced, etc). That means that Mozilla can present non-Roman characters correctly in forms and in text files, as long as the MS Arial Unicode font is installed, and it is selected in the Font preferences in Mozilla.

I am using IE 6 on Windows XP Service Pack 1. There may be some changes to IE in Service Pack 2.
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