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Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Yosemite Public Beta (v1): just wondering, are any other (non-developer) members taking refuge from the heat wave and trying it?

It downloaded and installed here without fuss and works reasonably well as far as it goes (no iOS8 Handoff, Continuity etc. yet).

Despite some oddities (fixable) with drive format and partition names, “Checksum mismatch”, and “Logical Volume Group” the experience is stimulating and survivable. Migration Assistant works so very, very slowly, you may think it has crashed, so maybe avoid it for now especially since progress bars can be very unreliable.

Big Cautions: Back up everything beforehand; install on a separate — not your normal working — drive or partition, do NOT opt to use iCloud at initial set-up (or the iBook Store), and read all the caveats in, for example, MacWorld on-line.

Think of riding a stripped down hi-tec mountain bike across bumpy terrain with great scenery when the front fork suspension needs maintenance ;-)

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Alan Cox
Euan . . . don't for one moment think that your learned advice on Yosemite has caused no interest just because no one has bothered to respond. I'm pretty certain that many of us have got the message loud and clear - don't touch Yosemite yet. And, pray, what secret code do you use to get all those question marks in your contributions?
A very respectful (and simple) Alan

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Alan, not so much "learned" as fumbling enthusiasm. It's the first edition of the public beta, not the "actual" Yosemite.

Re. question marks: yes, there is just one at the end of the first paragraph, but any others are a bug or corruption in your browser (Safari 7.0.5 in use here). Try a restart or even a reinstall of your browser.

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Mick Burrell
Euan - do you have Safari set to use Unicode (UT8F) code? If not, that may be it. According to Chris it's what we should all be using (!)

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Mick and Alan. Safari 7.0.5 (here) is set up with Western (ISO Latin 1) in Safari> Preferences> Advanced> Default encoding. This is the default Apple install setup and has always worked just fine here. That doesn’t mean that Chris is “wrong”, it’s just what I use. My work is in Latin glyphs, but I do occasionally use greek and cyrillic.

Perhaps Alan could post details of what he is using (Browser and System versions, etc.) since he is finding strings consisting of a series of question marks. This could, in principle, be due to some sort of corruption in his font caches which is messing up his font mapping - or even a corrupt font. This can be fixed by a Safe Boot, and (possibly) a font re-install.

For interested onlookers a visit to > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode < may be relevant, and the article touches on one area where there used to be transcribing problems: eMail diacritics (accents such as grave, acute, cedilla, umlaut, etc.) These used to appear in the recipient’s mail box as short strings of letters unrelated to the text sent, sometimes with a question mark. Things are a bit better these days, but there are still issues here and there.

Quote (re. Email)
“MIME defines two different mechanisms for encoding non-ASCII characters in email, depending on whether the characters are in email headers (such as the "Subject:"), or in the text body of the message; in both cases, the original character set is identified as well as a transfer encoding. For email transmission of Unicode the UTF-8 character set and the Base64 or the Quoted-printable transfer encoding are recommended, depending on whether much of the message consists of ASCII-characters. The details of the two different mechanisms are specified in the MIME standards and generally are hidden from users of email software.”

“The adoption of Unicode in email has been very slow. Some East-Asian text is still encoded in encodings such as ISO-2022, and some devices, such as mobile phones, still cannot handle Unicode data correctly. Support has been improving however. Many major free mail providers such as Yahoo, Google (Gmail), and Microsoft (Hotmail) support it.”
Unquote. Don’t worry too much about the techie bits, just forge onwards!

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Mick Burrell
I see your question marks too Euan - it's where you've used an apostrophe as I have here, twice.

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Mick and Alan. Just to reassure everyone, all these posts from me are from Mavericks 10.9.4, not Yosemite.

I've just changed Safari prefs (advanced) FROM Western (ISO Latin 1) TO Unicode (UTF-8), restarted Safari, and, wonder of wonders, there are the little offenders in all their black diamond-hard questionability.

Safari 7.0.5 has two ways to change text encoding - either by using Safari Prefs> Advanced> Default encoding, or by going to the View> Text Encoding> menu. The former seems to require a Safari restart to change the apostrophes, the latter is more obliging and doesn’t.

(Alan, your query had no apostrophes), Mick, your last posting had two apostrophes:
both arrived here (whether I have selected ISO Latin or Unicode (UTF-8) in unimpeachably correct apostrophic style. However, with Unicode (UTF-8) selected here, my posts are now apostrophic ally questionable, and presumably similar to what you are seeing. If you are using Unicode UTF, how about changing to Latin ISO just to see what happens to my posts at your end - and to any apostrophic posts you may make at this end.

Test: “Here’s a Western (ISO Latin 1) apostrophic sentence, it’s rubbish but will do the bizz.”
(double ASCII quotes at start and end, Two ASCII apostrophes within.)

Googling > Text Rendering question mark < offers:

> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11788712/single-quotes-showing-as-diamond-shaped-question-mark-in-browsers-no-database-o <

> http://learnplone.org/documentation/faq/why-do-apostrophes-and-quotation-marks-not-appear-correctly/view <

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Mick Burrell
Hi Euan - changing back to Latin shows your apostrophes as they should be. What were you using when you typed that? I wonder if he who posts and he who reads just need to be using the same coding. To test:

Using Latin encoding:

"Enclosed in double quotes" - 'enclosed in single quotes'

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Mick Burrell
Changed coding to Unicode, quit Safari and restarted. Post above shows apostrophes correctly so that's my theory out of the window!

Unicode:

"Enclosed in double quotes" - 'enclosed in single quotes'

Does anyone see the black squares with question marks in in either of my posts or do all apostrophes show correctly?

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Mick and Alan. There I was adjusting, carefully, to a new day dawning, and reading the on-line newspapers with my gi-normous mug of tea when The Independent > Voices page showed a different apostrophic catastrophe: simple posessive apostrophes are rendered as follows below.

No matter whether Unicode or Western ISO are selected in Safari prefs (with safari restart):
> www.bbc.co.uk < and > www.theguardian.com/uk < pages are Normal with all options (Unicode, ISO Latin, Default, Mac OS Roman — Prefs or View). I haven’t checked with Western (Mac OS Roman) in Safari prefs.

HTML 5 and Cascading Style Sheets issue at The Independent? O tempora, o mores!

Mick's latest apostrophes and quotes arrived normally this morning, Western (ISO Latin 1) here. I was using Unicode UTF for that post (only) - this is using Western (ISO Latin 1).
——————————————

1. Safari Prefs > Advanced set to Western (ISO Latin 1) and restarted

1.1 View> Text Encoding> set to Default:
Normal

1.2 View> Text Encoding> also set to Western (ISO Latin 1):
America’s (America + a with circumflex + Euro sign + trade mark symbol + s).

1.3 as above, but View> Text Encoding set to Western (Mac OS Roman):
America’s (America + , + A with umlaut + o with circumflex)

1.4 as above but View> Text Encoding set to Unicode (UTF-8):
Normal

——————————————

2. Safari Prefs > Advanced set to Unicode (UTF-8) and restarted

2.1 View> Text Encoding> set to Default:
Normal

2.2 View> Text Encoding> set to Western (ISO Latin 1):
America’s (America + a with circumflex + Euro sign + trade mark symbol + s).

2.3 as above, but View> Text Encoding set to Western (Mac OS Roman):
America’s (America + , + A with umlaut + o with circumflex)

2.4 as above but View> Text Encoding set to Unicode (UTF-8):
Normal

——————————————

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Checking the Google results for > Text rendering question mark <, the Tampere University of Technology, Finland, offers this info and advice in English (and no, Alan, I don’t understand all of it either).
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/characters.html <

The author’s personal website has an engaging drawing by his daughter
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/personal.html <

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Mick, here's your test as requested typed in direct, not from textedit.

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Mick Burrell
Here's a reply typed direct.

Here's one typed into TextEdit

Here's one typed into Old Pages

Here's one from the latest Pages

here's a second from Pages

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Mick here’s your (second) test message from TextEdit, but converted to “plain text”

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi (to anyone who may have been following these graceful gyrations). Mick and I have been trying out options over the telephone (n.b. not 'phone) to see if we could pin down the issue.

As you can see, although the Guardian and the BBC have avoided this (?HTML and cascading style sheets?) issue, The Independent is prone to it.

If you are using Safari you can see what we were doing by simply changing the Default encoding,
BUT FIRST make sure you note down your original setting so you can return easily and simply to your preferred setup!

1. Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Default encoding to any one of:
Western (ISO Latin 1) or
Western (Mac OS Roman) or
Unicode (UTF-8)
Restart Safari after each change and check this Discussion thread.

and/or

2. in Safari > View > Text encoding (second from bottom) try the same changes. No Safari restart required here.
BUT FIRST make sure you note down your original setting so you can return easily and simply to your preferred setup!

Default is whatever you have set in Safari Advanced encoding (see 1. above).

Once the Discussion thread has refreshed itself you will see all manner of delights for the eye, including Black Diamond Question, trademarked Euro symbols, and the letter i (lowercase) with grave, acute and circumflex accents instead of the ubiquitous dot.

Don't forget to restore your original settings afterwards!

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Alan Cox
There are times in life when we wish we had never poked out nose into an issue. I am experiencing that sensation right now!!

I have struggled through the above discussion and had a friendly pat on the backside from our learned Chairman.

As I understand it at the moment, there may be something I can do in my machine to get rid of these 'question marks in a diamond' which infest/dignify Euan's outstanding contributions but I am too terrified to try them out at present. I hope that a weekend's study will allay my fears and encourage me to jump over the cliff lemming like.

So, just in case, . . . . farewell.

Alan Cox

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Text encoding in my view menu is set to 'Default' and, in preferences, my Default is Western (ISO Latin 1). Euan's original posting had no unintended question marks but it is a phenomenon I've encountered occasionally on some websites.

At least now I know that, if I encounter a page where it seems worth the trouble, I can improve the readability by tweaking the Text Encoding setting in the View menu, and return it to 'Default' afterwards.

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Mick Burrell
Sorry everyone :-) Euan and I were experimenting with different settings whilst talking on the phone. We tried something and posted it to see what the other one saw.

For what it's worth, Chris has suggested we should all be using Unicode these days.

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Lionel Ogden
All the punctuations look fine to me. But then I am still cuddling a big cat and have not strayed as far as a surfing beach yet.

Re: Yosemite Public Beta

Avatar Rowland (Jim) Wren
I have Yosemite installed on my new 27" iMac but haven't seen it much as I have been busy fitting out my new home.

What I have found that my great idea of a 32" TV & an 27" iMac on a single post looks really impressive but these old eyes can't see the Mac screen. Needs more work! I have tried the accessibility controls but haven't yet found anything that works, it must be in there somewhere, anyone got any ideas?

I was going to add a photo but can't find a way to do it, is there a way?
 
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