FP98: Wrong Characters Displayed After Changing HTML Encoding

• Microsoft FrontPage 98 for Windows

SYMPTOMS

When you open a page that contains high-byte characters in a Web browser, the wrong characters appear. For example, if you enter the lower-case "n" with a tilde over it, it appears in the Web browser as an upper-case A, with a tilde over it followed by a plus/minus sign.

NOTE: You can enter high-byte characters by clicking Symbol on the Insert menu or by pressing NUMLOCK and then pressing ALT and entering a three-digit number on the numeric keypad.

CAUSE

This problem occurs when you set the HTML encoding to the Multilingual (UTF- 8) format. Resetting the HTML encoding to None does not correct the problem.

NOTE: To set HTML encoding, open the page in FrontPage Editor, click Page Properties on the File menu, and then click the Language tab. Under Save, in the "HTML Encoding for saving this page" list, select the HTML encoding format you want.

When you set HTML encoding, FrontPage Editor writes the Charset attribute in the Meta tag, which tells your Web browser how to interpret the characters used on the page. When you reset HTML encoding to None, FrontPage Editor removes the Meta tag and the charset attribute, but the characters retain the Multilingual (UTF-8) format. Therefore, when you open the page in a Web browser, the browser will still interpret the characters as being Multilingual (UTF-8) encoded.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

A high-byte character does not appear on the standard keyboard. However, you can enter a high-byte character by pressing the ALT key and entering a three- digit number on the numeric keypad. For example, to enter the lower-case "u" with an acute accent, press ALT+163 on the numeric keypad. You can also insert this character by clicking Symbol on the Insert menu.

For additional information on high-byte character sets, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q63746
   TITLE     : Print Prints Incorrect Higher-Order Character