Browser Test for Vietnam

Test Page 5.2

A Test Page by Stefan Probst

Version 1.0: 2002-04-05 Stefan Probst -- first version
Version 1.1: 2002-04-11 Stefan Probst -- added body text, added comments to title test.
Version 1.2: 2002-05-03 Stefan Probst -- some minor corrections, added bookmark test and resize test.
Comments and bug notes pls. mail to me.

Notes

This page has been designed for two audiences: Users (to help choosing a browser) and producers of browsers (for quality assurance).
It avoids therefore too specific terms (like "glyphs") and contains in the beginning explanations for both groups.

The Vietnamese Alphabet consists of the following characters:: a A, ă Ă, â Â, b B, c C, d D, đ Đ, e E, ê Ê, g G, h H, i I, k K, l L, m M,
n N,o O, ô Ô, ơ Ơ, p P, q Q, r R, s S, t T, u U, ư Ư, v V, x X, y Y.
All vowels (a A, ă Ă, â Â, e E, ê Ê, i I,o O, ô Ô, ơ Ơ, u U, ư Ư, y Y)
can either "stand alone", or be combined with any one of five different "tone marks":
grave ̀ ("huyền") - acute ́ ("sắc") - tilde ̃ ("ngã") - hook above ̉ ("hỏi") - dot below ̣ ("nặng").

Previous tests have shown, that:

None of the tested browsers make any difference between
- UTF-8 encoded files (charset=utf-8), characters encoded using UTF-8
- UTF-8 encoded files (charset=utf-8), characters encoded using NCRs (hex or dec)
- ISO encoded files (e.g. charset=iso-8859-1), characters encoded using NCRs (hex or dec).
The kind of normalization does make a big difference:

Example: Letter "e" with circumflex and dot below (like in "Việt")

1. Fully Pre-Composed: ệ

Unicode Standard "NFC"

2. "VN-Combining": ê ̣

Characters pre-composed, tone marks combining. - There is no international standard for this behaviour.

3. "VN-Canonical": e ^ ̣

Only combining characters, tone marks sorted last. - There is no international standard for this behaviour.

4. Only combining characters, sorted by canonical order: e ̣^

Unicode Standard "NFD"

(5. There is theoretically one more version: ẹ ^

Since this makes in Vietnamese writing contents/habits even less sense than version 4,
and it is also no international standard, this version has not been considered and tested.)

Notes:

All of those 5 versions use valid "Unicode characters", i.e. character points!

The given description for NFC and NFD is not 100% correct, but true for Vietnamese characters,
because all characters in all combinations (except stand-alone combiners, e.g. for text books)
exist as pre-composed characters in the Unicode table.
The OS makes a comparable big difference.
With the proper fonts installed, there is virtually no difference between Win98, Win98SE, WinME; but a big difference to Win2000.
(situation for Mac OS and Unix/Linux still outstanding)
The Browser and its version makes a difference.

W3C moves towards making NFC the compulsory standard for webpages.

Browsers' capability of handling the "Vietnamese" Unicode characters can be categorized as follows:

No display at all
The characters - or the whole string - are not displayed at all, or substituted.
(e.g. the page's "title" parameter is substituted with the file name in MS InternetExplorer on pre-Win2k)
Wrong display
The characters are displayed as "squared box", vertical line or question mark ("?").
(e.g. in an image's "alt" parameter of MS InternetExplorer on pre-Win2k)
Poor display
The characters are rendered poorly (often too small or too big in comparison to othher characters).
(e.g. in an image's "alt" parameter of MS InternetExplorer on pre-Win2k)
Proper display
(e.g.: most browsers on Win2k and later.)

Therefore,

This page is encoded in UTF-8, and avoids/does not use NCRs as much as possible.
This page uses only NFC for the tests.

The Tests

Pre-condition: Unicode enabled fonts are installed.
Windows ME (?) and later ships already with those fonts pre-installed.
In previous versions, they have to be installed separately, or it is done during a browser upgrade.

1. Standard Display and Printing Test

The "basic" test. Do all of the following characters appear properly and can be printed properly?
If a browser fails to display those characters reasonably on the screen, then all further tests are rather futile.
a A à À á Á ã Ã ả Ả ạ Ạ - ă Ă ằ Ằ ắ Ắ ẵ Ẵ ẳ Ẳ ặ Ặ - â Â ầ Ầ ấ Ấ ẫ Ẫ ẩ Ẩ ậ Ậ
e E è È é É ẽ Ẽ ẻ Ẻ ẹ Ẹ - ê Ê ề Ề ế Ế ễ Ễ ể Ể ệ Ệ - i I ì Ì í Í ĩ Ĩ ỉ Ỉ ị Ị
o O ò Ò ó Ó õ Õ ỏ Ỏ ọ Ọ - ô Ô ồ Ồ ố Ố ỗ Ỗ ổ Ổ ộ Ộ - ơ Ơ ờ Ờ ớ Ớ ỡ Ỡ ở Ở ợ Ợ
u U ù Ù ú Ú ũ Ũ ủ Ủ ụ Ụ - ư Ư ừ Ừ ứ Ứ ữ Ữ ử Ử ự Ự - y Y ỳ Ỳ ý Ý ỹ Ỹ ỷ Ỷ ỵ Ỵ

Do the characters appear properly in the following "body text" (on same line, etc.?)

Hỡi đồng bào cả nước,
"Tất cả mọi người đều sinh ra có quyền bình đẳng. Tạo hóa cho họ những quyền không ai có thể xâm phạm được;
trong những quyền ấy, có quyền được sống, quyền tự do và quyền mưu cầu hạnh phúc".
Lời bất hủ ấy ở trong bản Tuyên ngôn độc lập năm 1776 của nước Mỹ. Suy rộng ra, câu ấy có ý nghĩa là:
tất cả các dân tộc trên thế giới đều sinh ra bình đẳng; dân tộc nào cũng có quyền sống, quyền sung sướng và quyền tự do.
Bản Tuyên ngôn nhân quyền và dân quyền của Cách mạng Pháp năm 1791 cũng nói:
"Người ta sinh ra tự do và bình đẳng về quyền lợi, và phải luôn luôn được tự do và bình đẳng về quyền lợi".
Ðó là những lẽ phải không ai chối cãi được.

2. Page "title" Tag

This test shows, how the browser handles the title of a web page, when it is written using "Unicode characters".
In fact, old OS'es, e.g. MS Windows versions before Windows 2000, don't allow in the window title
characters outside of the current 8-bit active encoding.
This affects then also the representation in the taskbar.
Furthermore, they might have also problems to display "Unicode characters" in the menu, which may have some effects on bookmarks, etc.
How does the browser handle this situation?
The HTML code of the page which you are viewing is:
<title>Việt Nam Browser Test 5.2</title>
a) Does this title appear properly in the title bar at the top of the document's window?
(usually this is followed by the browser's name, e.g. "Việt Nam Browser Test 5.2 - Microsoft Internet Explorer")
b) Does the title appear properly in the taskbar
(i.e. usually the bar at the bottom of the screen which lists all the open windows)?
Or is it substituted by something else, e.g. the filename "browsertest52.html"?
c) If your browser has "tabs" (sub-windows for different pages inside the application's main window):
Does the title appear properly in the tab's
d) If you bookmark this page, how is the bookmark displayed?

3. Other Tags

a) image "alt" attribute at "broken" image: ("Việt Nam" should be displayed instead of the image)
b) image "alt" attribute on mouse over: (some browsers show the cotent of the "alt" attribute, when the mouse is moved over the image)
c) link "title" attribute: (most browsers show the cotent of the "title" attribute, when the mouse is moved over the link): Move the cursor over this link!
d) acronym "title" attribute: (most browsers show the cotent of the "title" attribute, when the mouse is moved over the word "Việt Nam" below): The tested word is again Việt Nam.

4. Form Fields

5. Resize Test

Change the "Zoom settings" ("View -> Text Size", or "View -> Text Zoom") in your browser to different values and repeat the test.

(end)