Does anyone know a way of getting a radical dot symbol into HTML - at the moment I'm stuck with using the degree symbol (ie °). I'm also having problems with equation arrows, is ---> really the best HTML can cope with? I guess this just shows how non-ideal the current version of HTML is for scientists (I know HTML3 is better, but many browsers still aren't compatible). Ironic, really, given the Web's origins! Paul Deards Internet Publisher Chemistry and Industry 0171-2353681 x233 pauld@chemind.demon.co.uk http://ci.mond.org/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
Does anyone know a way of getting a radical dot symbol into HTML - at the moment I'm stuck with using the degree symbol (ie °). I'm also having problems with equation arrows, is ---> really the best HTML can cope with?
I guess this just shows how non-ideal the current version of HTML is for scientists (I know HTML3 is better, but many browsers still aren't compatible). Ironic, really, given the Web's origins!
This is a manifestation of the character set problem. Someone has estimated that across chemistry as a whole, some 3000 "special" characters have been used over the years. Solving this (given some of the character sets are proprietary and cannot be assumed resident on a user's machine) is a non trivial problem. The other problem is that most character sets are in fact 8-bit encoded, ie at most 256 characters can be addressed. The Unicode system of 16-bit encoding will address that problem, but appears to be a long way away from being adopted on PCs. Hence we have to rely on proprietary solutions. I believe that Microsoft will be using "TrueDoc" fonts in V 3.0 of Internet Explorer which will almost certainly give us a much larger selection of special characters, but whether that represents a solution is anyone's guess. If someone has more informatio about "TrueDoc" do let us know!! Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ (Eudora Pro 3.0) ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
On Mon, 17 Jun 1996, Paul Deards wrote:
Does anyone know a way of getting a radical dot symbol into HTML - at the moment I'm stuck with using the degree symbol (ie °). I'm also having problems with equation arrows, is ---> really the best HTML can cope with?
I guess this just shows how non-ideal the current version of HTML is for scientists (I know HTML3 is better, but many browsers still aren't compatible). Ironic, really, given the Web's origins!
It's important to distinguish between whether an HTML file can *carry* the information and whether that information can be satisfactorily *rendered* on any or all browsers. HTML is an application of SGML and SGML defines a method of carrying characters (or strings) using 'general entities' - these are the &foo; that you see. The definitions of the entities are given in a document called the DTD which defines the syntax of the language. If you look in that (downloadable from W3) and if you can understand SGML DTDs :-( you will find that the entities are defined using the ISO-Latin-1 set (in HTML2.0). In principle entities can be defined relating to other character sets including Unicode. (You may also define other entities yourself at the head of your HTML file if you know SGML syntax, though I doubt there are many browsers which can comply with this.) In SGML (e.g. in CML) it is possible to define any entities you wish - certainly all the ISO ones. This is frequenly done in publishing applications. Sometimes these can be rendered into laTeX; in other cases it depends on the power of the postprocessing software. P.
Peter Murray-Rust, Glaxo Research & Dev. (pmr1716@ggr.co.uk); (BioMOO: PeterMR) Birkbeck College, ubcg09q@cryst.bbk.ac.uk, CBMT/Daresbury mbglx@seqnet.dl.ac.uk http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS/index.html, http://www.dl.ac.uk/CBMT/HOME.html ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
participants (3)
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Paul Deards
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peter Murray-rust
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Rzepa, Henry