Tag(s): article-definitions-characters

This article introduces a number of basic concepts needed to understand other articles that deal with characters and character encodings.

The article has been updated with explanations of the terms ‘user-perceived character’, ‘grapheme-cluster’, ‘typographic character unit’, and ‘glyph’, and a warning about the vague use of the term ‘character’.

Read the article Character encodings: Essential concepts.

Codările caracterelor (Character encodings)

Manipularea codării de caracter în HTML și CSS (Handling character encodings in HTML and CSS)

Codarea caracterelor: Concepte esențiale (Character encodings: Essential concepts)

These articles were translated into Romanian thanks to George Misel.

Umgang mit Zeichencodierungen in HTML und CSS (Handling character encodings in HTML and CSS)

Zeichencodierungen: grundlegende Konzepte (Character encodings: Essential concepts)

Eine Zeichencodierung wählen und anwenden (Choosing & applying a character encoding)

Das BOM (byte-order mark) in HTML (The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML)

Normalisierung in HTML und CSS (Normalization in HTML and CSS)

These articles were translated into German thanks to Gunnar Bittersmann.

Codificación de caracteres: conceptos básicos (Character encodings: Essential concepts)

Selección & aplicación de codificación de caracteres (Choosing & applying a character encoding)

These articles were translated into Spanish thanks to the Spanish Translation Team, Trusted Translations, Inc.

Some articles are brand new and others were originally part of a tutorial, but have been updated and amplified to bring HTML5 to the fore and incorporate feedback from various readers. The articles are:

1. Character encodings: Essential concepts
2. Choosing & applying a character encoding
3. Declaring character encodings in HTML
4. The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML
5. Normalization in HTML and CSS
6. Characters or markup?

Together these articles, with several other existing articles that were updated at the same time, provide practical advice to content authors on how to handle character encodings in HTML and CSS.

Comments are being sought on the following new articles prior to final publication:

1. Handling character encodings in HTML and CSS
2. Essential definitions related to character encodings
3. Choosing & applying a character encoding
4. Character encoding declarations in HTML
5. The byte-order mark (BOM) in HTML
6. Normalization in HTML and CSS
7. Characters or markup?

These articles have been derived from the former tutorial, which has already undergone a review. Since then, HTML5 has been brought to the fore in the articles and various small changes have been added, including some short summary information.

The three updated articles are the result of merging the tutorial material with existing articles. They are:

• CSS character encoding declarations
• Using character escapes in markup and CSS
• Serving XHTML 1.0

The character encoding section of the techniques page relating to HTML and CSS authoring has also been overhauled, to include the new material.

Please send any comments to www-international@w3.org (subscribe). We hope to publish a final version in one to two weeks.