[MUD-Dev] Dots in a name?

[Matt Chatterley]

On Sun, 10 Aug 1997, Chris Gray wrote:

> [Martin K:]
> 
> :The problem I have is with implementations - how do I know how non-ASCII
> :characters are being displayed on the client side? MSD*S uses a different
> :character set from Windows, which is different from the Mac and Unix and
> :NT.
> :
> :Is this problem insurmountable?
> 
> Well, you can just pick one, and ignore everyone else! Mainly because that's
> what the Amiga uses, I picked ISO Latin-1, which works not bad for many
> international uses. The codes for it seem to work on many UNIX boxes as
> well, and I suspect can be made to work on PC's. A friend with a Mac
> complained that the E-acute I had used in the name "Faberge" was some
> wierd thing on his system. I thought about it a bit and decided I didn't
> really care.
> 
> Of course Microsoft would prefer you use Unicode.

Heh. I suppose it depends on whether or not you intend to 'encourage' a
custom client for the game (IIRC you mentioned ages ago that Island
basically built in a client, Martin?).

If so, and even without, you could distribute a font for non-unix systems
that can handle these special characters, surely? Those users who actually
object to unusual characters looking funny on their systems can snag the
relevant font file, and then proceed to install and use it to alleviate
their problems.

This isn't as easy for UNIX users - so I'd suggest you use something UNIX
is happy with as your base.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Speak softly and carry a big stick." -Theodore Roosevelt