SillyDog701

[Captgosnold]

Hi,
I joined soley because I want an answer to this question, although I will
stay on and follow some of the other topics.

Perhaps this question has been asked before. Why did Netscape stop
supporting the html "font face=symbol" tag in versions 6 and 7? I know
the current html standard deprecates it. But I have been in the
communications software business for some years now, and whenever a
standard has an item that says "deprecated," I have always had to
support it. Deprecated does not mean obsolete.

I ask this because I have a math education website,
www.karlscalculus.org, that uses the symbol font in its html to generate
math symbols. I had this long before it was deprecated in the standard.
When I saw that it was deprecated, I looked up the new standard for
generating those symbols and tried it on some test pages. Trouble was
that many browser versions, including some still circulating versions of
IE, didn't support the new standard, or supported it but with glaring bugs.

So I kept with the deprecated method. Perhaps part of it was laziness.
I will someday have to convert some nearly 200 webpages that make
up the site to the new standard -- lotta work. So I reiterate -- depricated
does not mean obsolete. Does anybody know Netscapes rational for
their dropping support?

Karl

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)

[Antony]

Hi,
I joined soley because I want an answer to this question, although I will
stay on and follow some of the other topics.

Perhaps this question has been asked before. Why did Netscape stop
supporting the html "font face=symbol" tag in versions 6 and 7? I know
the current html standard deprecates it. But I have been in the
communications software business for some years now, and whenever a
standard has an item that says "deprecated," I have always had to
support it. Deprecated does not mean obsolete.

Short answer, in order to keep moving forward, you need to say goodbye to something.

I ask this because I have a math education website,
www.karlscalculus.org, that uses the symbol font in its html to generate
math symbols. I had this long before it was deprecated in the standard.
When I saw that it was deprecated, I looked up the new standard for
generating those symbols and tried it on some test pages. Trouble was
that many browser versions, including some still circulating versions of
IE, didn't support the new standard, or supported it but with glaring bugs.

You will need to use a better methods to generate Math documents, or use MathML language, which is based on HTML/XML. Then there goes the browser support issue.

So I kept with the deprecated method. Perhaps part of it was laziness.
I will someday have to convert some nearly 200 webpages that make
up the site to the new standard -- lotta work. So I reiterate -- depricated
does not mean obsolete. Does anybody know Netscapes rational for
their dropping support?

Karl

I know the pain, but once you know where to change you can have those done in a script files or just a few find and replaces.

Another suggestions, have you tried MacKichan's Scientific WorkPlace or Scientific Notebook. A very good type settings application for those Math minded people like me. It is very expensive althought. (thanks to the university, I have a license.)

As for Netscape's support, I suggest you check http://devdege.netscape.com/ OR Danny Goodman's Dynamic HTML - The Definitive Reference.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)

[Shark Daddy]

On the contrary, deprecated means it is obsolete and that there is an alternative, or it's just a bad idea. It isn't removed from the standard because there'd be an outcry.

If I understand correctly, you're referring to the <font> tag, and how you can't set a font to the Microsoft font called "Symbol". The reason this is deprecated in the current version of HTML (4.01), is because you can use a style attribute or CSS. Nobody is stopping you from using the <font> element, but it's an inherently bad idea if there's no backup font for those who don't have the font.

Netscape's browser supports <font>, but the code of that page is full of errors, which is probably playing hell with Netscape's error-handling. attribute values must be enclosed in quotes (e.g. <div id="lorem"> instead of <div id=lorem>). The doctype is invalid (should be capitalized, which doesn't really matter, and have a URI). I strongly suggest that you get a better HTML editor that will generate better code for you, such as the one offered with Netscape 7.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030821 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+