presenting an alternative when browser can't handle unicode symbols

[Jim Higson]

On my site I have:

Русский

which, normally written is:

РуÑÑкий (Russian for "Russian")

Now, most browsers handle this fine, but a few have problems. I there a way
I can give alternate latin-alphabet text, such as:

Russkij (nearest equivalent)

to be used when the browser can't handle the full version? Hopefully this
can be done with some simple markup.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Русский - -
Now, most browsers handle this fine,

Unfortunately this depends on what has been installed on the user's
system. Unfortunately, Windows

but a few have problems. I there

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Русский - -
Now, most browsers handle this fine,

Unfortunately this depends on what has been installed on the user's
system. Unfortunately, Windows systems are often shipped without
"internationalization support" pre-installed, and many users don't know
what to do. Most modern browsers handle it fine _if_ the font in use
contains Cyrillic letters. But this depends. There's not much you can do
about it, as an author.

I there
a way I can give alternate latin-alphabet text, such as:

Russkij (nearest equivalent)

to be used when the browser can't handle the full version? Hopefully
this can be done with some simple markup.

No, unfortunately not. It would be fine if there were - especially for
characters that are very rarely available in common fonts, such as
phonetic symbols.

There's _something_ you can do, though (in addition to the apparent
solution of putting a transliterated version in parentheses after the
text). You can use the title attribute to suggest a "tooltip":

<span lang="ru" title="Russkij (= Russian)"

Русский</span>

(In the general case, transliteration of Russian is very problematic on
the Web, since so many conflicting transliteration systems exist. For
example, "russkij", "russkiy" and "russki" are all standard - by
different standards. But in this case, the reader probably gets the idea
anyway.)