Showing Pinyin with tone marks on this BBS?

[stephanhodges]

I couldn't find if your BBS shows all pinyin correctly or not, but I did notice one post with some pinyin with tones.

I also run a phpBB for local chinese classes, and I would like to be able to support this if possible.

Do you have any tips or references on how to do this?

I have my web site encoded as UTF-8 (yours is different), but that doesn't seem to matter.

Is it (perhaps) the editor's fault?

I pasted an example from Wenlin below. Third tones seem the "worst" plus all the u with : over them.

Thanks in advance!

n? h?o ni3 hao3 ??

? á ? à a
? í ? ì i
? ó ? ò o
? ú ? ù u
? ? ? ? ü

 

[mikelove]

I think you just need to input the text in Unicode instead of GB:

nǐhǎo

I copy-and-pasted that in from Wenlin with no problems. If it's not working on your end, make sure that you're running a reasonably new web browser with Unicode support. You could also export the Pinyin text from Wenlin in HTML format; use "Make Transformed Copy" in the Edit menu with "Encode &#; (decimal)" and paste those codes in.

 

[stephanhodges]

I have Wenlin clipboard format set to "UTF-8 (...Transformation Format )

As far as I know, I was using Unicode for all copy/paste.

I specifically forced UTF-8 in IE 6, and it still doesn't display characters correctly below. I also turned off "Auto-select" with no difference.

Here's the output from Encode &#; (decimal)

nǐ hǎo
你好

ā á ǎ à a
ī í ǐ ì i
ō ó ǒ ò o
ū ú ǔ ù u
ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ ü

If I mark it with the "Code" button, then I get something that does display correctly for me.

nǐ hǎo
你好

ā á ǎ à a
ī í ǐ ì i
ō ó ǒ ò o
ū ú ǔ ù u
ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ ü

 

[mikelove]

I see the same problem in IE, but it looks fine in Firefox, so you might want to consider using that.

 

[stephanhodges]

Thanks.

I don't think I can "require" that of everyone, and I can't use that browser at work anyways. Software installations are controlled

Some web sites work, some don't. Haven't found a phpBB that works yet, however.

I've posted a message on their support forum.

 

[mikelove]

Hmm... in that case you could try another program like vBulletin - that's what chinese-forums.com uses. Though there's a license fee, unfortunately... you might also be able to customize phpBB's stylesheet to better support Chinese characters; set a default font and encoding which includes Pinyin syllables and that might get IE doing what better-designed browsers already do.

 

[adamlau]

Wenlin 3.3 GB & UTF-8 Examples...

Wenlin 3.3 clipboard format GB: 你好 nǐhǎo
Wenlin 3.3 clipboard format UTF-8: 你好 nǐhǎo

 

[Anonymous]

I installed firefox to compare, and looked at this post series side-by-side.

Firefox doesn't recognize the Unicode in first post, but does view all other posts (which were using explicit character encoded on a character by character basis).

Forcing Firefox to Utf-8 encoding did display ALL posts correctly.
IE doesn't display the single character encoded items correctly in any mode (except for CODE block, which works across both browsers). Forcing it to Utf-8 doesn't help.

Ironically, if I save the entire page as a local HTML file, and then open with Word, it all displays correctly.

So, I decided to look at the CSS that is used. The CODE block is using "Courier", and the posts are using the "td" font family from the style sheet.

Each post is in a table data row (td). At the top, table header and data rows are assigned font family:

font,th,td,p { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif }

To test, I removed the Verdana font from the list, and EVERYTHING displayed correctly in IE. Since I'm not sure what a font list means in CSS, I put the font back in, but at the end of the list, and it still displays correctly.

Of course, Arial (as specified) doesn't look as good as Verdana, but I think the Verdana font is the problem. I also inserted "Times" at the front, and it displays all the Pinyin correctly.

Researching CSS, I found: http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_font_font-family.asp says:

The font-family property is a prioritized list of font family names and/or generic family names for an element. The browser will use the first value it recognizes.

I'm going to experiment a little more and then put something on my phpBB site.

Then, of course, I'll probably encourage you-all to do that too, so I can see things correctly

Thanks for your time on this!