Extended Font Characters Garbled in BookMarks

[Lagomorph Mom]

MS IE 7.057.30.13, Windows XP Media Edition 2004, SP3, last update 1/14/09

I understand the following characters cannot appear in a Bookmarks/Favorites
title ( / \ : * ? < > |) but why are most extended font characters transposed
into an underscore or a group of unintelligible characters? Even though I
have
chosen the most basic common fonts, Arial, Lucida Sans, Verdana, MS Sans
Serif, etc., when customizing the appearance of Windows, all the extended
font characters are changed after adding a URL or Website title with them.
My fonts are set for Western, Latin, and Unicode. Here are examples of
extended characters that are modified by IE, © ® ½ ° ‣ ∞ ™ · †. These
characters are used in the English language. Is there something I must
change or alter to have them appear as used?

Thank you, MaryBeth

I first posted this question in IE general but no one responded.

 

[Asger Joergensen]

Hi Lagomorph

MS IE 7.057.30.13, Windows XP Media Edition 2004, SP3, last update 1/14/09

I understand the following characters cannot appear in a Bookmarks/Favorites
title ( / \ : * ? < > |) but why are most extended font characters transposed
into an underscore or a group of unintelligible characters? Even though I
have
chosen the most basic common fonts, Arial, Lucida Sans, Verdana, MS Sans
Serif, etc., when customizing the appearance of Windows, all the extended
font characters are changed after adding a URL or Website title with them.
My fonts are set for Western, Latin, and Unicode. Here are examples of
extended characters that are modified by IE, © ® ½ ° ‣ ∞ ™ · †. These
characters are used in the English language. Is there something I must
change or alter to have them appear as used?

Thank you, MaryBeth

I first posted this question in IE general but no one responded.

I am not sure I underatand what You mean, my first gues would be
that You probably need to install some extra languages.

Could You give an example of before and after ?
where in the world do You live (country) ?

Or maybe it has to do with different codepage in different parts
of windows on the web it is often Unicode, but most of the time
an the system it is the local codepage, in order for older software
to run correctly.

Western, Latin, are very different from Unicode !
Western latin only holds 256 chars
where as Unicode UTF-16 which is what windows use internal holds
65536+ characters and a lot of characters have different positions
in the tables.

If You run CharMap : %SystemRoot%\system32\charmap.exe
You will be able to see what I mean.
Choose Ariel as font and then change between "Windows Vestern"
and Unicode. At least some of the characters You show change
position in the codepage when doing that.

Kind regards
Asger

 

[MaryBeth]

Thanks for responding. In IE7, Internet Options, the language is set for US
English, the fonts are set as "Latin based". The default setting in
"Character Map" is "Unicode". So, when customizing Windows appearance, the
fonts I've chosen are Unicode based, I think.

What I am seeing in Internet Explorer is not what I have created. All I've
done is bookmark a website. When I later go to choose that bookmark and it
happens to contain extended characters (beyond ANSI character position 127
in the font map), they appear as an underscore or a collection of
nonsensical characters or a blank space. I was just wondering why this
happens and if there is a setting or option I can choose to see the actual
extended character rather than a blank space, underscore or bunch of
letters. Does this make more sense....I hope? MB

 

[Asger Joergensen]

Hi MaryBeth

Thanks for responding. In IE7, Internet Options, the language is set for US
English, the fonts are set as "Latin based".

I live in Denmark and we have always made use of the characters above 127
because we and our nabo countries actually have characters beond the
Ascii charset.
US English only use the first 127 characters which means that the font creator
is free to put in any character or sign into the table/map in the last 127
positions of the map.

The default setting in
"Character Map" is "Unicode". So, when customizing Windows appearance, the
fonts I've chosen are Unicode based, I think.

I wouldn't count on that, I believe the charmap program always start as default
unicode now a days, unless You close it with another page chosen.
I mentioned Charmap.exe because You could use it to investigate which charecter
map windows was actually using to show the characters. Make not of the position
of e.g. † and see what it becomes when You change codepage.
In the western codepage "†" have position 134, but in unicode it have 8224
and position 134 in the unicode-page is not used at all.
Actually all the character between 127 and 160 are not used in the unicode-page.
(hex value 7F-A0)
http://jrgraphix.net/research/unicode_blocks.php?block=0
or
http://www.utf8-chartable.de/

What I am seeing in Internet Explorer is not what I have created. All I've
done is bookmark a website.

How do You actually create the bookmark ?
I ask because that might lead us to where You need to change settings.

When I later go to choose that bookmark and it
happens to contain extended characters (beyond ANSI character position 127
in the font map), they appear as an underscore or a collection of
nonsensical characters or a blank space.

I was just wondering why this
happens and if there is a setting or option I can choose to see the actual
extended character rather than a blank space, underscore or bunch of
letters. Does this make more sense....I hope? MB

To me it sound like, when You create the shortcut You are working in non unicode
but when You view the result in IE You are viewing it as unicode.
And in order to view Non US websites You need unicode in IE, so it is more
likely the settings for where You type in the shortcut that need to be changed.

Kind regards
Asger