Template talk:IPA/Archive 2

Showing tone diacritics in Firefox
With Firefox running on Mac OS 10.3.9 I can't get the diacritics for tones and and word accents to show upp properly. I just get the white boxes. However, when I helped Mark Dingemanse with some of his language articles, I noticed that when used in his vowel tables, they work like a charm! I tried with all kinds of tone diacritics, and they all seemed to work with his tables. Here's one of from Gbe languages:

Any idea why they show up properly with Marks method, but not with this template?

Peter Isotalo 16:56, May 25, 2005 (UTC)


 * Try installing more fonts. For me (Firfox 1.0 on OS X 10.2.1) it works all right when I install TITUS Cyberbit Basic and Gentium. -- j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰ&#596;̝ːk͡x 19:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)


 * But the font families that are used in the table (Arial Unicode MS and Lucida Sans Unicode) are both present in the supporting Template:IPA fonts. Surely that must mean that the problem somehow lies in the template, not the lack of fonts. And since bishonen complained about the same problem, and is also using Firefox and OS 10, I suspect there are others who are having the same problem.
 * Peter Isotalo 20:27, May 25, 2005 (UTC)


 * For reference, here are the characters from the table above:
 * no formatting: ĩ, ũ, ẽ, õ, ə̃, ɛ, ɛ̃, &#596;, &#596;̃, ã
 * with template:IPA:
 * —Michael Z. 2005-05-25 21:08 Z 


 * Those show fine for me with Opera 8.01/Windows, so if multiple Firefox/OSX users have a problem it must be a platform issue (browser or OS), not a problem with the template. Jordi·✆ 23:08, 25 May 2005 (UTC)


 * That's what I think, too. When I remove the fonts I've mentioned, then not all the signs will show up correctly, even though when I copy paste them to a Unicode compliant application (such as TextEdit), all of them appear. There seems to be a problem with certain Mac OS X fonts on Firefox. -- j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰ&#596;̝ːk͡x 09:22, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

But how can it not be a template problem if the fonts work fine in the table but not in the template? It doesn't seem particularly constructive to claim that an OS is incompatible with a template which is designed specifically to fix these problems. Telling me to get more fonts is fine and all, but this will obviously be a problem to other users as well.

Peter Isotalo 15:11, May 26, 2005 (UTC)


 * The template is designed to only affect the font display in MSIE/Windows, which has some major font display inadequacies. It shouldn't affect Firefox, Safari, etc. at all.


 * In the table above, the font specification affects all browsers, if the specified fonts are present. —Michael Z. 2005-05-26 16:28 Z 


 * In the appropiate place (which one?), there should be a note that Firefox/Mac OS X has some troubles with some fonts (which ones with which ones?). The signs I have most troubles with are the tone signs: Unless I activate Gentium or Titus, I'll only see ? ? ? ? ? (or nothing at all) instead of , even though they all show up correctly when I copy paste them to TextEdit. -- j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰ&#596;̝ːk͡x 23:05, 26 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I use safari in mac 10.3.9. I think the problem has to do with what fonts are specified. The template does not affect anything at all for me, this is because of the  declaration. In Mark's table above, the font-family is specified and thus affects what is displayed.  Whatever font is specified by the Mac browsers does not display the diacritics correctly. You can see this by comparing the tables below (I dont use Code2000, Chrysanthi Unicode, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Bitstream Cyberbit, or Bitstream Vera):


 * I dont know what to suggest for this. This font behaviour has something to do with Wikipedia itself. I think this because if I save this page as HTML locally (i.e. it doesnt reference the style sheets or whatever it is doing), then the diacritic behaviour is fine without declaring any font-family. I think I have reached the end of my knowledge about this, so someone please help. peace — ishwar   (SPEAK)  18:18, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)


 * Here is the code for a quick test. Save as .html.

test this is a test


 * — ishwar  (SPEAK)  19:57, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)


 * Different for me: On Safari 2.0 (OS X 10.4.1), everything displays all right except for the samples lacking font specification, no matter whether on the seperate file or on wikipedia. On Firefox 1.0.4, everything is okay, it is only annoying that i+'combining tilde' really is i+'combining tilde' and not ı with tilde above. -- j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰ&#596;̝ːk͡x 01:47, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

hi. From what I tell now, the reason my setup (still Safari 1.3, OS 10.3.9) was not displaying the combining diacritics correctly has to be with the specification:

font-family: sans-serif

This declaration forces my version of Safari to use the Helvetica font, and it is this font which does not properly align the diacritics. (but Helvetica does align things correctly if I paste into TextEdit). If Safari uses another font, then this problem is resolved. Incidentally, if I disable Helvetica (through Font Book), then Safari used the Lucida Grande font which displays all diacritics correctly.

The font-family declaration is in Wikipedia's main.css file.

Anyway, maybe this just obvious to everyone else. If so, sorry. peace – ishwar  (speak)  03:38, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)