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BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted
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Subject: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Murray MacLeod Date: 08 Nov 02 - 06:54 PM About five years ago, I used to subscribe to the Flatpick-L list. One of the subscribers to the list used to make a habit of signing off with "Just my two cents" but instead of "Just my $0.02" which is the usual form, he somehow was able to print a character for the "cents" which looked like a "c" with a forward slash "/" bisecting it. Ultra kewl, but I have never seen this anywhere else. I have tried searching the Flatpick-L archives, but to be honest, I cannot wade through the contributions of all these redneck good ol'boys without vomiting, so I am just wondering if any ASCII whizz-kid on Mudcat can assist? Murray |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Snuffy Date: 08 Nov 02 - 07:05 PM You can get it by typing & then cent then ;without any spaces. ¢2 Wassail V |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Mark Clark Date: 08 Nov 02 - 07:13 PM If you're entering HTML as we do here on Mudcat, just type ¢ and it will display as ¢. If you're using a standard ASCII font, the hexidecimal code is A2 or decimal 162 which you can enter by holding the Alt key and typing 0162 on your numeric keypad as in ¢. - Mark |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 08 Nov 02 - 07:18 PM It is an ASCII character. It's just not on most keyboards. The ASCII value is 162. In Word, with NumLock turned ON, Hold down the Alt key and enter 0162 on the Numpad. There's probably an equivalent way of entering characters by ASCII value in other wordprocessors. You can put it into HTML by typing "¢" (without the qoutes). Since it's a Named HTML Character, you can put it into HTML by typing "¢" - again without the quotes. My 2¢ worth. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 08 Nov 02 - 07:20 PM Obviously Mark types faster than I do - or he saw it first. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Murray MacLeod Date: 08 Nov 02 - 07:30 PM Well, dang my poons. Y'know, I even wrote to the list moderator and he was unable to help. Mudcat comes up trumps again. Got to try it. Just my 2¢ Or should it be just my ¢2 Murray |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 08 Nov 02 - 10:03 PM I don't use MS Word so I don't know if it has this feature or not, but the word processor I do use has has a "Special Keyboard Characters" option that gives access to a lot of useful characters including ¢ © ® ± ü á æ without having to do HTML or know the ASCII value. Bruce |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: GUEST,Q Date: 08 Nov 02 - 10:19 PM All special HTML characters are listed in a nice table at this website. It is worth making a copy (5 pages). HTML Characters |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: GUEST,Q Date: 08 Nov 02 - 10:27 PM Nuts! http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~jwmitch/iso8859-l.html or is the l a 1? Trying again, l first HTML Chars HTML Chars |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: GUEST,Q Date: 08 Nov 02 - 10:45 PM Looks like the site has closed. Here are a few not on the keyboard. "¢" ¢ ¢ "£" £ £ "ത" &euro ത (European currency) "¥" ¥ ¥ (Japanese yen) "§" § § (section sign) "©" © © (copyright) "±" ± ± (plus or minus) "®" ® ® (Registered trademark) "µ" µ µ (Micro sign or Mu) Leave off the " " when using them. I have left the semicolon off the descriptive codes (2nd column). Be sure and follow the number with a semicolon;. The rest are all the accents, umlauts, etc. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: GUEST,Q Date: 08 Nov 02 - 10:52 PM I thought the " " would let the HTML numbers print, and leaving off the semicolon would let the descriptive code print. They came out anyway. They are &, #, the number, and the;. In order, the numbers are 162 (cent), 163, 8364, 167, 169, 177, 174, 181 (micro) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 09 Nov 02 - 03:04 AM Bee-dubya-ell - Word has keyboard shortcuts for quite a number of "special characters." The problem with the shortcuts for general use is that you have to learn a separate shortcut for each character, and the shortcut methods differ somewhat for different wordprocessors. Using ASCII value entry is the "more general" method - the same for any ASCII symbol, provided that you know its character number, so it's the easier way to tell someone how to get a character, especially if you don't know what wp they are using. To put "special characters" into your word processor, you should never need HTML. That's only needed if you're typing directly into something like the mudcat "Reply to Thread" box, or otherwise creating an "html document." Regardless of what word processor you use, you can always use the Windows Character Map (assuming you use Windows). You will usually find it at Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools, with an icon that's supposed to look like a keyboard "key." You can copy any character that appears there and paste it into a word processor document (or anywhere else characters are useful). Generally, if you can get the character "up" in your wordprocessor, you can copy and paste it into the "Reply to Thread" box on mudcat, and it will display ok - if the person who will read it has selected display in a font similar to what you use. You cannot, generally, paste characters from special-purpose fonts like Symbol or Dingbats for display on an html-based system - only those from "Western European" "text" fonts. For general word processing for something you intend to print you can, of course, use any font displayed in the Character Map, since it will only display the fonts present on your machine, and you can print all of those. For a document that you might attach to an email, you have to be careful to use only the fonts the recipient is likely to have. For posting to html, you must, for all normal applications, use only a standard text font, like Times Roman, Arial, Helvetica, Palatino, Courier, etc. Because of the ambiguity about what font readers of our sterling prose may have selected, when posting into an HTML based system like mudcat, it is generally preferable to code "special" characters using the HTML code names, or to code the "special" character using its ASCII (decimal or hex) value - unless you've confirmed that it comes across in legible form when you use some other method of input. Only about 30 characters have html "namecodes," but any printable ASCII character can be "coded into" an html document using its ASCII number - decimal or hexadecimal. The methods are interchangeable, although where a "namecode" exists, its use is encouraged. For Guest,Q also: The three "html special characters" &, <, and > must always be coded to get them to display in an html document. If you inadvertently type one of them in a posting to mudcat it may (rarely) display, it may (occasionally) display as an "unidentified character" which usually is an empty box or a large dot - depending on the reader's font selection, or it may (frequently) "trash" your whole posting, or at least everything that follows the offending character. You can type & - the character namecode, or type & - the code for ASCII decimal character number 38, or type & - the code for ASCII Hex character number X26, to display the character &. You can type < - the character namecode, or type < - the ASCII decimal character number, or type < - the ASCII Hex character number to display the character <. You can type > - the character namecode, or type > - ASCII decimal character number, or type > - ASCII Hex character number to display the character >. There's quite a bit of useful information in the Mudcat PermaThread on HTML - or on a whole bunch of other easily accessible web sites. On the Mudcat main thread page, click on the arrow by the box at the top of the list of threads, select "Site Map and PermaThreads Index" and hit "GO." Happy exploring. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 09 Nov 02 - 03:11 AM Too late at night? All character codes must end with a ";" which I omitted in some of the above. & & & & < < < < > > > > John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: GUEST,Q Date: 09 Nov 02 - 11:50 AM John, in the middle column, I typed the "descriptive code" for cent without a semicolon, but it still printed out as ¢. The same happened to the rest. Lets see what happens now. ¢ no semicolon, ¢ with semicolon. In earlier postings (before Mudcay new version), only the number codes worked, the descriptive codes did not. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: GUEST,Q Date: 09 Nov 02 - 11:52 AM ¢ and ¢ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 09 Nov 02 - 02:41 PM Q - The ";" are part of the "official" code. Maybe the new mudcat has a pellschecker for code? It would appear that the "new 'cat" has an error correcting routine - probably intended to train us to make html errors so we won't be able to function anywhere else. I'd have to recommend that you use the ";" to keep in practice - but whatever works is good if it doesn't hurt anyone but you. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Bill D Date: 09 Nov 02 - 06:05 PM for me, being basically lazy and inclined to find something to do it FOR me, the 'easy' way to deal with the seldom-used character codes is to either: A) look it up in a program like Map of Chars where all the possible characters are listed, and you just look up the one(s) you want. This will show you the characters available in ALL fonts on your machine..(Windows machine!) or B)if you do a LOT of this, to have a program like AllChars do it for you with an 'almost' intuitive use of keyboard macros. ¢ ß å é œ etc.... to make a ¢ sign, I just hit the 'ctrl' key, and then the '/' and the 'c' key in succession...the program says "oh, he wants the symbol using both those together!" ...and if you don't want to memorize them all, it has help screens with the characters grouped by type...neat! I use both programs---I have AllChars in my startup menu so it is always there and I can ß and ë anytime I want! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Bill D Date: 09 Nov 02 - 06:11 PM I know Windows has a rudimentry little character map somewhere, but here is a http://www.fontsnthings.com/tools/viewers.html>bunch of programs which do similar things to what I mentioned above. Once you have one of these, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it!..... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: GUEST,Q Date: 09 Nov 02 - 06:43 PM The Rice University had a good, concise table of characters that was self-explanatory. It is gone (my attempts ablve) but there is another that is only fair at the Univ. Kentucky chemistry site. Only the first 256 in the chart on p. 2 will work without the font indications. HTML Characters I agree, Mudcat has not done any favor by making non-standard codes work. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Bill D Date: 09 Nov 02 - 06:56 PM tsk...messed up my 2nd link ..try this bunch of programs |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Mark Clark Date: 09 Nov 02 - 07:42 PM The feature that allows Wintel users to hold the Alt key and type a four digit number is a feature of Windows (any version) not just Word. All versions of Windows also come with a program called charmap that lets you pick out any character from any font, plain ASCII or special. Just click start/run |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 09 Nov 02 - 08:49 PM Bill D - I downloaded AllChars some time ago - I think it was on your recommendation, and if so, thanks. This is a useful tool, but unfortunately not as useful for most people as it may at first appear. The difficulty is that, while it lists all the "Unicode" characters that could be in a font set, nobody (in my real world) actually has (or can use) full Unicode character sets. The "original" ASCII character set used 7 of the eight bits in a "single byte" to define what character is wanted. This is why there are only 128 characters in the ASCII set - that's all the numbers you can represent with 7 bits. When a program sees a "character number," it goes to a character code "page" to look up how to "draw the character." Quite a long time ago, someone realized that the eighth bit in the "character byte" could be used to tell a program "look on the other page." In simple terms, this allowed the use of 256 characters. It is not generally appreciated though, that there is no single standard "other page." Some may remember that back in the DOS days you had to "boot" a program called ANSI.SYS if you wanted to use the Symbol Font or "graphical characters." Booting ANSI.SYS told your machine "the other page is the ANSI EXTENDED CHARACTER SET." The Windows systems most of us work with can have a rather large number of "other pages," but unless you have taken specific action to install them, most systems only use a few. It should be noted that the "default other page" that you get if you buy Windows in London is NOT the same as what you get if you buy it in Chicago (or Warsaw, Paris, or Hong Kong etc). The "other page" is diffent for a US Mac than for a US PC. The differences between locales come under what Micro$oft refers to as "localization of software." The differences for the Mac are because "that's the way he did it." Characters that are less frequently used but are common to quite a few "localizations" may appear on virtually everyone's "other page," but it is very difficult to find specific information that will allow you to guess whether an "extended character" that you use will be legible (as the same character) on someone else's machinery. When you "swap languages" with the systems most of us use, all you're doing is using a different "other page." You still have only 256 characters available until you make the next swap. To be able to make use of anything approaching all the characters shown by AllChars (or in Unicode tabulations) you need to be able to "code" the full (at least two byte) Unicode character number, which brings us back out of the thread drift and back to the original topic of the thread. People considering "keeping up" with things, may want to plan on an operating system (as well as hardware) upgrade in the sometime in the future, because: WINDOWS 2OOO PROFESSIONAL (OR BETTER) AND WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL (OR BETTER) ARE THE ONLY EXISTING MICROSOFT OPERATING SYSTEMS CAPABLE OF FULLY "HANDLING" DOUBLE-BYTE CHARACTER SETS. The "or better" above is to include "Server" and "Enterprise" versions of those two operating systems. At present, even with an op system that can handle "double byte character sets" (DBCS) it is a real "trial of perseverence" to actually implement full Unicode usage. As an example, even though there is a "kit" to let Win2K Pro do the right-to-left and top-to-bottom characters (Hebrew/Chines] alignment, it appears that you can only get it from the Win2K Server "superpack" - only available to owners of 2K Server. I suspect that it will all come, ...someday..., but I'm not going to predict when we can call it "useful" for us po' folk. But you might want to "get ready(?)" (I will note, for the record, that other op systems have varying capabilities with DBCS and MBCS (multi-byte character systems). Unix can, in principal handle up to four-byte characters, but I've not seen it implemented.) Reference: Developing International Software, 2d edition, Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-1583-7, about $49 (US). [My copy shows copyright 2003 - so it may not be in your bookstore yet.] John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Bill D Date: 09 Nov 02 - 11:53 PM *nod*...thanks for the extra 'clarification', John...*grin*...I see that it ain't easy to have EVERYTHING you might want working at one time...but with the hints and programs noted, most casual users should be able to do the common tricks and get the standard 128 characters. I seldom need the more arcane stuff..(I seem to remember managing to get some weird font to work by changing the default character set once, but it was just experimenting, and not something I needed) I, personally, am wondering if they'll get Linux into an easily configurable mode before I have to buy into Microsoft's more 'advanced' systems which do more things, but compromise user control and freedom. I read what I can, and stick with WIN98 for the nonce, as I am NOT a developer and do not need to be "on the cutting edge". I have newsgroups I read and web site I look at where folks FAR more knowlegeable than me discuss it al...and right here at Mudcat, you and Mark and several others provide useful advice. I am a funny sort...I cant do much more than change the oil in a car, but I can DRIVE anything...truck, sports car, etc......and the same with computers. I can't program and barely recognize the insides of the box, but I can tweak, follow directions, find tools, do searches and work out fixes for problems that have probably saved us many hundreds of $$$$ in the past few years...(crashes, 'safe mode', lost files, etc....)... I may overdo the suggestions about little programs to do this & that (who NEEDS 4 different file managers?*wry grin*), but sometimes it seems like the only way to be sure of having enough, is to have a little too much! Maybe it comes from growing up in Kansas, hmmm? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 10 Nov 02 - 02:07 AM Bill - I sort of have to take the opposite tack. Since the other half of my partnership uses our system in her work (and I'm expected to provide all the "tech support" we've got), I'm forced to keep a pretty "clean" system. That means I have to be very cautious about installing even the most innocent appearing "utilities," since my machine shares the system with hers, and little things can do a lot of damage. Even something as innocent as my installation of a "maverick" font on my machine can (and did once) "poison" her book layout on her machine. On the other hand, by keeping only standard, documented programs (mostly from sources approved by her customers) - and by learning as much as we can about using them to do everything we need to do, we very seldom have to resort to arcane diagnostics or special purpose programs; and we can do just about anything we need or want to. The "buy-in" to get a basic software setup with "office grade commercial software" can be pretty steep, which is why I suggested in "that other thread" that anyone thinking seriously about new systems should look for bargains in the software package before worrying too much about the hardware price - which is pretty much the same from any supplier who will bundle a good software package. I'll repeat that the AllChars utility, which was a deliberate violation against my "house rules" about downloads, was recently very useful to me. But (*grin back at ya'*) anything you have to "code," like accents, umlauts, and such, is probably coming from the "other page" and is in the 128 to 255 range (not standard 128). John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: Bill D Date: 10 Nov 02 - 10:16 AM yep, John..."different strokies for different folkies"......I sure do see how your situation is delicate when work depends on it. I think I'd go mad if I had to be that careful! *grinning at all the toys I play with* (I am not sure how a font just 'being there' could mess up a layout...but *shrug*, the workings of computers can't be as easily looked at as 3-D stuff like pipes and boards.) (I gather that you run a pair of networked machines...that is next on my list, as my son needs access to online stuff, and we don't want another phone line....and DSL and cable are still pretty expensive...and not totally stable, yet!) For most of the world, PCs and online stuff is really pretty new...most of us have only been using it for 5-6 years, and I still remember my ex-boss being glad to have a TRS-80 when 'most' work was on mainframe over a 1200 baud modem!.......I wonder if we will EVER have a standardized, dependable way of using all this---free from viruses and not crashing randomly. I suppose not...*sigh* |
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Subject: RE: BS: Non-ASCII Character wanted From: JohnInKansas Date: 10 Nov 02 - 04:28 PM Bill et.al. We run our net connection on POTS. We did get a second line at our last relocation, so we can talk and type at the same time. I have 3 main machines connected on a 10Base-T (etherlink) LAN. One of our two printers is also "LAN wired," although a second printer runs off the parallel port on one of the machines. My etherlink "box" is an 8-port, so it has spare ports where I can plug in either or both of our two laptops. Web connection is from "her" Win2K, with any/all the others connecting via the built in "Internet Connection Sharing." (Which incidentally worked just as well when "her machine" was one of the Win98s). The flatbed scanner is on "my" (Win98SE) USB port. She has a CD burner that I installed in the Win2K machine, but I have a second hard drive in my machine so I don't have an IDE port left for a burner. I plug the "new" laptop (WinXP) into the LAN and use its burner if she's busy on her machine. My first "home-owned" machine was an 80286 state of the art "screamer" that whipped along on a 4.8MHz processor (in 1981) on DOS 3.1. It was $5,023 out of the box, and came with a 5.25 360KB floppy drive and a 32MB hard drive. I added a 5.25 HD, a second hard drive, and had to "upgrade" to CGA monitor and card to use some graphics programs I wanted, and added the then unheard of 1 MB add-on RAM on a memory board. (The maximum installable with DOS 4.5, which I'd gone to by then, was 2MB due to address limits. Windows 1.1 came with the mem card, but there was no software to run on "Windows" then.) By the time I junked that machine, I believe I calculated a hardware "lifetime cost of ownership" of a little over $13,000. (About $100/month.) The situation has improved gradually, but today you should be able - if you get a full-suite software package, double the RAM, and get a generously sized HD - to get an "out of the box" system for $2K to $3.5K that will last you 5 to 10 years with virtually no necessary add-ons. It looks like a bargain to me - but you do lose all the fun of sleepless nights running diagnostics, looking for new accessories, etc. And of course the "piddle price" goes up if you're just curious and want to do things that "the herd" doesn't do. I do still get that urge, occasionally. John |