CSS width property problem with western european characters

When specifying a width property within a CSS style, data that contains
special characters (ex. umlauts) causes the data to be separated by
spaces . When I remove the width property, the data is presented
correctly.

Interestingly, I cut and pasted the following word (which was one
continous word - Tunnbröd ) into this message and the problem arose:
Tunnbr ö d

How do I remove the white-space?

TIA,
Ron in SF

ron.tornambe@bunkerhill.com

wrote:

> When specifying a width property within a CSS style, data that contains
> special characters (ex. umlauts) causes the data to be separated by
> spaces . When I remove the width property, the data is presented
> correctly.
>
> Interestingly, I cut and pasted the following word (which was one
> continous word - Tunnbröd ) into this message and the problem arose:
> Tunnbr ö d

Can you show the problem page? Might help with detecting the problem


--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
accessible web design: http://locusoptimus.com/

In article < .com>,
"" <> wrote:

> When specifying a width property within a CSS style, data that contains
> special characters (ex. umlauts) causes the data to be separated by
> spaces . When I remove the width property, the data is presented
> correctly.
>
> Interestingly, I cut and pasted the following word (which was one
> continous word - Tunnbröd ) into this message and the problem arose:
> Tunnbr ö d
>
> How do I remove the white-space?

Ron,
Without a real example, I can only guess, but this smells like an
encoding problem. Wild guess -- are you using Windows notepad and saving
as "Unicode"?

Do post an example as Els recommended.

--
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Bulk HTML validation, link checking and more

Thanks for the reply Philip.

The data is coming from a MS-SQL database with mixed English/Western
Euorpean character data in some fields. The html is generated by
Crystal Reports that references CSS styles and an html wrapper I have
supplied. The reason for including the width property in the CSS style
is to work-around a quirk that prevents text-alignment from working
unless the width pproperty is supplied. Crystal is breaking the field
(ProductName, ex. Tunnbröd) into multiple <td>...<td> (one for each
special character) resulting in the erroneous spacing.

Here's a link to the html file:
http://www.bunkerhill.com/dev/ViewReport_Invoice.html

If you look under the Product Name: column, you'll see the problem. The
CSS style is cssStlye0036. You can search for ProductName or ö to see
the code.

I really appreciate your help. Thanks!
Ron

Philip wrote:
> In article < .com>,
> "" <> wrote:
>
> > When specifying a width property within a CSS style, data that contains
> > special characters (ex. umlauts) causes the data to be separated by
> > spaces . When I remove the width property, the data is presented
> > correctly.
> >
> > Interestingly, I cut and pasted the following word (which was one
> > continous word - Tunnbröd ) into this message and the problem arose:
> > Tunnbr ö d
> >
> > How do I remove the white-space?
>
> Ron,
> Without a real example, I can only guess, but this smells like an
> encoding problem. Wild guess -- are you using Windows notepad and saving
> as "Unicode"?
>
> Do post an example as Els recommended.
>
> --
> Philip
> http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
> Bulk HTML validation, link checking and more

wrote:
> Thanks for the reply Philip.
>
> The data is coming from a MS-SQL database with mixed English/Western
> Euorpean character data in some fields. The html is generated by
> Crystal Reports that references CSS styles and an html wrapper I have
> supplied. The reason for including the width property in the CSS style
> is to work-around a quirk that prevents text-alignment from working
> unless the width pproperty is supplied. Crystal is breaking the field
> (ProductName, ex. Tunnbröd) into multiple <td>...<td> (one for each
> special character) resulting in the erroneous spacing.
>
> Here's a link to the html file:
> http://www.bunkerhill.com/dev/ViewReport_Invoice.html
>
> If you look under the Product Name: column, you'll see the problem. The
> CSS style is cssStlye0036. You can search for ProductName or ö to see
> the code.

Ron,
There's two immediate problems here. The first is that you're
delivering UTF-8 data but labeling it as ISO-8859-1 in a META tag. The
characters don't display correctly at all for me (using Firefox) unless
I force the encoding to UTF-8.

The second problem is that cssStyle0036 specifies "WIDTH: 2.0521in" and
that style is applied to the o-with-umlaut that's in tunbrod. That
forces that single character to be 2 inches wide, although who knows
what an "inch" means on a computer screen. &diety; knows what Crystal
Reports thinks it is doing here. Good luck hammering it into behaving
nicely.

Bye

--
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Bulk HTML validation, link checking and more


> Philip wrote:
> > In article < .com>,
> > "" <> wrote:
> >
> > > When specifying a width property within a CSS style, data that contains
> > > special characters (ex. umlauts) causes the data to be separated by
> > > spaces . When I remove the width property, the data is presented
> > > correctly.
> > >
> > > Interestingly, I cut and pasted the following word (which was one
> > > continous word - Tunnbröd ) into this message and the problem arose:
> > > Tunnbr ö d
> > >
> > > How do I remove the white-space?
> >
> > Ron,
> > Without a real example, I can only guess, but this smells like an
> > encoding problem. Wild guess -- are you using Windows notepad and saving
> > as "Unicode"?
> >
> > Do post an example as Els recommended.
> >
> > --
> > Philip
> > http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
> > Bulk HTML validation, link checking and more

The meta tag was a left-over from various stabs at resolving the
problem that sired the inclusion of the width property. The orignal
problem was that the text-align attribute is not applied. The Crystal
html does specify the style in the <td>..</td> and all other style
attributes are applied, but the text-align has no effect. Any ideas
about this is appreciated.

tks

wrote:
> wrote:
> > Thanks for the reply Philip.
> >
> > The data is coming from a MS-SQL database with mixed English/Western
> > Euorpean character data in some fields. The html is generated by
> > Crystal Reports that references CSS styles and an html wrapper I have
> > supplied. The reason for including the width property in the CSS style
> > is to work-around a quirk that prevents text-alignment from working
> > unless the width pproperty is supplied. Crystal is breaking the field
> > (ProductName, ex. Tunnbröd) into multiple <td>...<td> (one for each
> > special character) resulting in the erroneous spacing.
> >
> > Here's a link to the html file:
> > http://www.bunkerhill.com/dev/ViewReport_Invoice.html
> >
> > If you look under the Product Name: column, you'll see the problem. The
> > CSS style is cssStlye0036. You can search for ProductName or ö to see
> > the code.
>
> Ron,
> There's two immediate problems here. The first is that you're
> delivering UTF-8 data but labeling it as ISO-8859-1 in a META tag. The
> characters don't display correctly at all for me (using Firefox) unless
> I force the encoding to UTF-8.
>
> The second problem is that cssStyle0036 specifies "WIDTH: 2.0521in" and
> that style is applied to the o-with-umlaut that's in tunbrod. That
> forces that single character to be 2 inches wide, although who knows
> what an "inch" means on a computer screen. &diety; knows what Crystal
> Reports thinks it is doing here. Good luck hammering it into behaving
> nicely.
>
> Bye
>
> --
> Philip
> http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
> Bulk HTML validation, link checking and more
>
>
> > Philip wrote:
> > > In article < .com>,
> > > "" <> wrote:
> > >
> > > > When specifying a width property within a CSS style, data that contains
> > > > special characters (ex. umlauts) causes the data to be separated by
> > > > spaces . When I remove the width property, the data is presented
> > > > correctly.
> > > >
> > > > Interestingly, I cut and pasted the following word (which was one
> > > > continous word - Tunnbröd ) into this message and the problem arose:
> > > > Tunnbr ö d
> > > >
> > > > How do I remove the white-space?
> > >
> > > Ron,
> > > Without a real example, I can only guess, but this smells like an
> > > encoding problem. Wild guess -- are you using Windows notepad and saving
> > > as "Unicode"?
> > >
> > > Do post an example as Els recommended.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Philip
> > > http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
> > > Bulk HTML validation, link checking and more

> > wrote:
> > > Thanks for the reply Philip.
> > >
> > > The data is coming from a MS-SQL database with mixed English/Western
> > > Euorpean character data in some fields. The html is generated by
> > > Crystal Reports that references CSS styles and an html wrapper I have
> > > supplied. The reason for including the width property in the CSS style
> > > is to work-around a quirk that prevents text-alignment from working
> > > unless the width pproperty is supplied. Crystal is breaking the field
> > > (ProductName, ex. Tunnbröd) into multiple <td>...<td> (one for each
> > > special character) resulting in the erroneous spacing.
> > >
> > > Here's a link to the html file:
> > > http://www.bunkerhill.com/dev/ViewReport_Invoice.html
> > >
> > > If you look under the Product Name: column, you'll see the problem. The
> > > CSS style is cssStlye0036. You can search for ProductName or ö to see
> > > the code.
> >
> > Ron,
> > There's two immediate problems here. The first is that you're
> > delivering UTF-8 data but labeling it as ISO-8859-1 in a META tag. The
> > characters don't display correctly at all for me (using Firefox) unless
> > I force the encoding to UTF-8.
> >
> > The second problem is that cssStyle0036 specifies "WIDTH: 2.0521in" and
> > that style is applied to the o-with-umlaut that's in tunnbrod. That
> > forces that single character to be 2 inches wide, although who knows
> > what an "inch" means on a computer screen. &diety; knows what Crystal
> > Reports thinks it is doing here. Good luck hammering it into behaving
> > nicely.

In article < .com>,
"" <> wrote:
> The meta tag was a left-over from various stabs at resolving the
> problem that sired the inclusion of the width property. The orignal
> problem was that the text-align attribute is not applied. The Crystal
> html does specify the style in the <td>..</td> and all other style
> attributes are applied, but the text-align has no effect. Any ideas
> about this is appreciated.

Ron,
First things first: PLEASE do not top-post. Here's a quick primer in
case you're not familiar with the term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_posting

As to your most recent comments, I am confused as to why you have
mentioned text-align. Your original question was about odd spacing
around non-English characters. Did my suggestions solve that problem for
you?

In any case, I don't see a problem with the text alignment in my browser
(Firefox 1.5). The "Product Name" column is centered, as the CSS
suggests. If there's some other text-alignment problem you see, you'll
have to be more specific.

--
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Bulk HTML validation, link checking and more

<> scripsit:

> The reason for including the width property in the CSS style
> is to work-around a quirk that prevents text-alignment from working
> unless the width pproperty is supplied.

Which quirk? And which text-alignment? A data cell in a table is
left-aligned by default, and this is surely suitable for normal textual
content like product name. I haven't heard of any quirks in this issue. The
CSS code on the page is a horrendous mess, comparable to the products of
Office software before any cleanup, so it could cause problems, but then
_that_ should be fixed.

> Crystal is breaking the field
> (ProductName, ex. Tunnbröd) into multiple <td>...<td> (one for each
> special character) resulting in the erroneous spacing.

Well, then fix _that_. It is surely a problem, no matter what the spacing
might be.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/