Re: OT: degree sign

Ah ha!  Jim and I were justified.  Thank you Chris!

DF

"Christopher P. Lindsey" wrote:

> > >What it is, is that you may have an email program that lets you
> > >compose in HTML, so you see the degree sign, but it won't show as
> > >what you intend in ascii text.  As far as I know, there is no way to
> > >add special symbols to ascii text:-)
> > +++++++
> > I think I have to take issue with that; as I said when I tried,
> > I sent my sig (since edited to remove degree) to myself and back
> > with no trouble. I have my prefrences set _not_ to send HTML.
>
> I'm joining this a little bit late.  I apologize for taking so long.
>
> The difference is 8-bit vs. 7-bit emails.  Every piece of information
> on a computer can be broken down to a single byte with a numeric value
> in the range between 0-255.  7-bit refers to the characters 0-127 (or 0
> through 2^7 - 1), whereas 8-bit covers the whole gambit with characters
> from 0 - 255 (or 0 through 2^8 - 1).
>
> The lower 7-bits are all reserved for the more 'normal' characters
> like letters of the alphabet, punctuation, backspaces, etc.  The
> 8th bit is used for specialized characters with accent marks, special
> graphics characters, and yes, degree signs.
>
> Some mail gateways (systems that mail passes through) are not 8-bit
> clean -- that is, they strip off 8-bit characters.  That could account
> for some loss.
>
> Other systems strip off the 8th bit locally, like before a message
> gets sent out to a mailing list.  This is the case at hort.net -- we
> strip them off because 8-bit messages could be more likely to contain
> viruses and the like.  Remember that every piece of computer code is
> broken up into those characters 0-255; if we strip off the eighth
> bit, any code that was sent won't be able to run.
>
> So in essence it's there to protect the subscribers, but it also means
> that you can't send degree signs or squiggles over your pinatas on any
> of the hort.net lists.
>
> Chris
>
> http://www.hort.net/gallery/      3142 online plant photos and growing!
> http://www.hort.net/gallery/date/2002-12-08/       The latest additions
>
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