Talk:Löwenheim number

Unicode edit of page

I the edit i made to the page was to convert the html tags on the page to the international character standard for the consistent encoding of characters on computing systems around the world. (Link to edit [[1]]) The unicode system of character representation is the standard for use on computer systems. Also this keeps the code clean and easy to read for others to use. I ask that you please revert back to the old revision of the page that i converted to use the Unicode system. This makes wikipedia easier to use for everyone and the servers happy. Thanks, --Darkskynet (talk) 23:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Unicode is not clean and easy to read for those who have font problems so that the more "exotic" Unicode symbols are all displayed as the same box. The problem is getting rarer, but it still exists for some users. Therefore it is an accessibility issue. We don't want to prevent such editors from contributing. At some point in the future we may get a general decision to convert most such entities to Unicode, but it's not OK to make such changes on a large scale before that happens. If it has happened already and I missed it, please point to the relevant guideline or discussion. Assuming that none exists, you risk getting your AWB privilege revoked. Hans Adler 23:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

There is currently a work around for people who are unable to display Unicode in there browsers, [[2]]. There is more information listed here Unicode_and_HTML. Wikipedia is slowly being converted to UTF-8 Unicode anyways. There are bots that go around and do nothing but convert pages html tags to Unicode, So even if this page is not converted it will be eventually anyways. WP:AWB does the conversion to Unicode by default to all pages it edits anyways. Looking forward to your reply, --Darkskynet (talk) 01:30, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

In support of Darkskynet, I'd like to also point out Help:Special characters#Editing. It mentions how unicode is preferable as html encoded special chars break searches. To quote:

For the purpose of searching, a word with a special character can best be written using the first method. If the second method is used a word like Odiliënberg can only be found by searching for Odili, euml and/or nberg; this is actually a bug that should be fixed—the entities should be folded into their raw character equivalents so all searches on them are equivalent.

The first method being:

Use a link to a special character listed under the edit box to insert that character. Note however that some characters are not displayed in Internet Explorer 6: Special characters under edit box. In some fonts, e.g. Arial, all the characters in this box are displayed, but it is not convenient for a user to have to switch fonts between webpages. You have to install the CharInsert extension to use this.

--Obsidi♠n^Soul 01:50, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

HTML entities (e.g. & a l p h a ; α / & a l e f s y m ; ℵ) work in just as many browsers as Unicode entities. I could see the search issue for "Löwenheim number", but that is never typed with an HTML entity in the article. What is typed that way is just mathematics. Searching for mathematics is already not going to work - the same thing could be typed as <math>\kappa</math>. On the other hand, keeping the HTML entities makes it slightly easier to maintain the math, for me at least. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:47, 21 January 2011 (UTC)