character encoding revisited

[hermes]

I have read a lot on this forum about the UTF-8 vs. local encoding debate. The consensus seems to be to go for local encoding just to be on the safe side. This is my plan. But I have a Q that hasn't been covered previosuly. My site will be in big5 traditional chinese for taiwan. But I do still expect traffic from mainland china as a lot of people in china can get the thrust of text in traditional chinese. So, I want the webpages to render well when opened by a mainland chinese browser (presumably set to GB by default). Will Big5 webpages open OK in mainland chinese browsers? I am of course most concerned with IE in mainland china. ANy insight will be very gratefully received.

[bill]

You do understand that these two languages are different? It's not simply a matter of switching the language encoding. You would need to rewrite the content for the mainland audience if you want the full benefit.

However, anyone in China who has the Big5 encoding enabled will certainly be able to see the site. You don't have to do anything special here. Just make sure that you properly set the encoding on each page for Big5.

[hermes]

I do understand that traditional chinese and simplified chinese are different and that the former is used in Taiwan (+HK) and the latter mainland china (+singapore). However, the thing is that a lot of people in mainland china, although only formally taught with simplified chinese, can understand the thrust at least, if not the full detail, of traditional chinese. So, I want my website to be available to people in Taiwan and China - even though the website, in this early stage, will only be available in traditional chinese (big5 encoding). Will this traditional chinese (big5) be ok in mainland chinese browsers? Perhaps someone in china can help - when you look at taiwanese websites with big5 encoding - do they look OK in your browser (without having to play manually with encoding settings)?

[redstorm]

i am in China. Both my eyes and my browser can "read" tradional Chinese easily. So it does to most Chinese and Chinese Operation Systems.