The IE6 unicode character display puzzle

D

Dominik

Hello,

as we're developing a web-based e-learning environment for mathematics
(www.activemath.org), we had to face the problems of unicode in IE6
lately.

Many common mathematical symbols (e.g. the 'is element'-glyph) aren't
displayed in some versions of IE6, even if the font specified (Lucida
Sans Unicode) is capable of displaying Unicode-characters (which are
correctly displayed in the Character Map application and in Wordpad
and Notepad).

Instead of the correct symbol the 'character no found'-square box
comes up. Needless to say that Mozilla and Opera display the very same
code correctly.

However, after some research the problem became more complex. There is
absolutely no point in saying that more recent versions of IE6 display
correctly. Sometimes younger builds (> 6.0.2800) don't do it, while
older builds (6.0.2600) sometimes work. SP1 itself doesn't seem to
influence behavior.

However, the puzzle is: even the very same, most recent, build
(6.0.2800.1106) behaves differently on different machines!! Still more
weird, the problem isn't reproducible, as the very same machine
behaves differently after reloading the page or restarting the
browser.

There's not even a consistency in what is missing. The three
possibilities you can face by viewing the very same source (can be
found at the end of the post):

1. A lot of symbols are missing
2. A few symbols are missing
3. The testpage is displayed 100% correctly

Does anyone of you have a solution without mapping every entity
manually to the Symbol-font? More info? A way of saying "This browser
works and the other doesn't"?

Thanks a lot for your kind attention,

Dominik Jednoralski
ActiveMath

-- testpage.html --

<html>
<head>
<title>Sonderzeichen in LSU</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body { font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; font-size: 12px}
-->
</style>
</head>

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<table width="415" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="139">Zeichen</td>
<td width="167">HEX</td>
<td width="101">Darstellung</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Mittelpunkt:</td>
<td width="167">00b7</td>
<td width="101">·</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Maps to:</td>
<td width="167">21a6</td>
<td width="101">↦</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Set of Real numbers:</td>
<td width="167">211d</td>
<td width="101">ℝ</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Element / kein Element:</td>
<td width="167">2208/2209</td>
<td width="101">∈ / ∉</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">umgekehrt Element / kein Element: </td>
<td width="167">220B / 220C</td>
<td width="101">∋ / ∌</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">power of an element of a group: </td>
<td width="167">2575 oder 02b9</td>
<td width="101">╵ oder ʹ</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">union:</td>
<td width="167">222a</td>
<td width="101">∪</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">conjunction:</td>
<td width="167">2227</td>
<td width="101">∧</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">disjunction:</td>
<td width="167">2228</td>
<td width="101">∨</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Skript-E (Ereignisfeld): </td>
<td width="167">2130</td>
<td width="101">ℰ</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">gro&szlig; P: </td>
<td width="167">2118</td>
<td width="101">℘</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Teilmenge:</td>
<td width="167">2282</td>
<td width="101">⊂</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Teilmenge oder gleich:</td>
<td width="167">2286</td>
<td width="101">⊆</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Obermenge oder gleich:</td>
<td width="167">2287</td>
<td width="101">⊇</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Existenzquantor: </td>
<td width="167">2203</td>
<td width="101">∃</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">nicht-Existenzquantor: </td>
<td width="167">2204</td>
<td width="101">∄</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">Teilt nicht:</td>
<td width="167">2224</td>
<td width="101">∤</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="139">(Spacer)</td>
<td width="167">8195 </td>
<td width="101">膕</td>
</tr>
</table>
</html>
 

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