ASCII Characters Was: Sun-drenched Gardens again

At 06:31 PM 11/15/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>I take it this does not work in email?  When I type Alt0128, I either get
nothing at all, or, if Alt is pressed first, and then released, just "128".
How do you get the sign for the pound?
>
>*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

I believe that the ability to use an extended ASCII character depends on the
program and the font being used.  There is the basic set of 126 ASCII
characters, an extended set that can be used with other fonts (providing
they have been defined in the font metrics), and special extended font sets,
such as the WP font sets for Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, math symbols, etc.

The key assignment is usually different in each program (MS Word,
WordPerfect, PageMaker, Claris Works, etc) for these symbols. So the Alt
0128 does not help me to understand what the symbol looks like unless I know
what program the writer is using (toss in platform and version as well).

Writing to an HTML editor introduces further complications, because it may
try to make substitutions.  

For the fun of it, I copied a bunch of extended characters from my WP word
processor in Times New Roman font into Eudora Pro 2.0 (screen font Arial):

    £¥™ ¶§¿¢®©‡

The first four do not show up, but the code is still there.  Starting with
symbol #5, the symbols are the pound, yen, trademark, paragraph, (?),
upside-down question mark, cent sign, register mark, copyright mark, and
(?).  Amongst the invisible first four, the first I think is the French
frank mark, the second one a Kroner?, (?), and the fourth is like the
British pound, but has two lateral strokes.  

Those of you with WP should be able to copy them into a blank document and
view what I have on my screen, unless your email editor reinterprets them.
I will send anyone who wants a rasterized GIF file of the characters for
comparison by private post.

MS Word has a character map which shows what the full character set is for
the chosen font.  WP will also use the full character set and use similar
fonts for other characters if it can find them.

The index of your program's instruction manual may have a table of character
definitions.  These can be hard to find.

I guess the bottom line here is to use only the 126 basic ASCII set and some
of the more common extended ASCII set characters.  Unfortunately, the Euro
symbol is too new to be read by most other programs.

Richard F. Dufresne
313 Spur Road
Greensboro, North Carolina  27406 USA
336-674-3105
World of Salvias:  http://www.eclectasy.com/gallery_of_salvias/index.htm
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