Odd characters in posts

>From: Drew Skyfyre <skyfyre@usa.net>
>
>Hi Debra,
>
>BTW #1 : Debra,something (maybe the font/character set you're using)
> is causing some characters (quotation marks & apostrophes
> for example) to show up rather strangely.

These are caused by using "curly quotes" (true typographical-style quotes,
rather than foot- and inch-mark straight quotes), which are completely
different characters in the DOS/Windows and Macintosh character sets.

Most email programs have either an option to replace curly quotes with
straight ones, or an option to encode the characters properly so that all
computer platforms should be able to view them correctly.

Gary Hanrahan

> These are caused by using "curly quotes" (true typographical-style quotes,
> rather than foot- and inch-mark straight quotes), which are completely
> different characters in the DOS/Windows and Macintosh character sets.

There appears to be a standardized extended character set that works on at
least many Email programs. I say that because I am able to send characters
with various diacritical marks from Netscape Communicator on my Mac to my
parents' PC running whatever Microsoft's Email program is called.

How about an experiment/survey? The characters below this paragaph should
be an umlaut A (an A with 2 dots over it, followed by the Spanish N with a
tilde over it (what do you call that in English "enyeh"?), followed by the
American "cent" symbol (a lower-case C with a near-vertical line through
it). The two letters are lower case, and the whole 3-character figure is
surrounded by curly quotes. The question is: Is that what you see below?

���

Please direct replies to me directly (mr88cet@texas.net), and I'll collect
responses and sent the final result to the list. Also let me know what kind
of computer and Email program you're using. Thanks!

Hi Gary, Those three letters you put on for test came through as they
should have. I didn't print them, but they look correct on the screen.
Look at the posting from Dan Stearns F + 1 = 0 on 1/2/99 at 2:43 PM. He
has a divide mark which is the .--. all written in one column (the mark
which I learned to use for divide in elementary school). My keyboard
doesn't have it and neither does my list of ASCII characters. Does your
keyboard have it or do you have it on your ASCII list? If so how do you do
it? You know what kind of computer I have.
By the way I have not changed the format of the new tuning. Someone set
it up for us to be sent with everyone elses non-tuning e-mail messages. I
can print each one by itself if I want to without having to print all the
other ones on the listing. I'll keep it that way at least for a while or
until someone running the tuning requires us to change to format. Other
formats should be OK also if necessary. MOM

----------
> From: Gary Morrison <mr88cet@texas.net>
> To: tuning@onelist.com
> Subject: [tuning] Re: Odd characters in posts
> Date: Friday, January 01, 1999 1:26 PM
>
> From: Gary Morrison <mr88cet@texas.net>
>
> > These are caused by using "curly quotes" (true typographical-style
quotes,
> > rather than foot- and inch-mark straight quotes), which are completely
> > different characters in the DOS/Windows and Macintosh character sets.
>
> There appears to be a standardized extended character set that works
on at
> least many Email programs. I say that because I am able to send
characters
> with various diacritical marks from Netscape Communicator on my Mac to my
> parents' PC running whatever Microsoft's Email program is called.
>
> How about an experiment/survey? The characters below this paragaph
should
> be an umlaut A (an A with 2 dots over it, followed by the Spanish N with
a
> tilde over it (what do you call that in English "enyeh"?), followed by
the
> American "cent" symbol (a lower-case C with a near-vertical line through
> it). The two letters are lower case, and the whole 3-character figure is

> surrounded by curly quotes. The question is: Is that what you see
below?
>
> ���
>
> Please direct replies to me directly (mr88cet@texas.net), and I'll
collect
> responses and sent the final result to the list. Also let me know what
kind
> of computer and Email program you're using. Thanks!
>
>
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Good. Since we've been over this before, I expected that you'd see the unusual
characters correctly. I'm glad there were no surprises.

As for a divide mark, yes, I can produce it: � I don't know how you'd go about
producing it, but on the Mac, I use a thingie called PopChar, which lets me type
anything in its character set with a click of a mouse button. Or, to be more
accurate, it pops them up in a menu.

As for changing over your tuning-list, I can't recall the exact step-by-step
procedure, but I'll say this much: You're already subscribed, so all you need to
do is change your "address book", or whatever Microsoft calls it. In your address
book, there's probably something called "tuning" as a shortcut for
"tuning@eartha.mills.edu". All you have to do is change that to being a shortcut
for "tuning@onelist.com".

Once you're in the mail program, look for a menu entry called something "Address
Book", and select it. I suspect you'll find it pretty easy to figure out from
there.

> From: Gary Morrison <mr88cet@texas.net>
>
> Good. Since we've been over this before, I expected that you'd see the unusual
> characters correctly. I'm glad there were no surprises.

Oops. Presumably as with my Mom, I didn't notice that this was going over the
list. Sorry to bug you all!

That being said though, do any of you know off the top of your head the exact
procedure for popping up the address book under Microsoft's Email program? Thanks.

Message written at 5 Jan 1999 22:46:24 +0000
In-reply-to: <199901030806.CAA06004@mw4.texas.net> (message from Ed & Alita
Morrison on Sun, 3 Jan 1999 02:06:54 -0600)
References: <199901030806.CAA06004@mw4.texas.net>

> How about an experiment/survey? The characters below this paragaph
should
> be an umlaut A (an A with 2 dots over it, followed by the Spanish N with
a
> tilde over it (what do you call that in English "enyeh"?), followed by
the
> American "cent" symbol (a lower-case C with a near-vertical line through
> it). The two letters are lower case, and the whole 3-character figure is

> surrounded by curly quotes. The question is: Is that what you see
below?
>
>
>
> Please direct replies to me directly (mr88cet@texas.net), and I'll
collect
> responses and sent the final result to the list. Also let me know what
kind
> of computer and Email program you're using. Thanks!

I see no characters at all. I am also rather out of touch as to what
this conversation is about -- I seem to have not seen the original
messages. What is a all this about HTML? That is not a suitable
format for e-mail, is usually unreadable and I just delete such junk.

Please enlighten me as to what this is all about.....

==John ff

> I see no characters at all. I am also rather out of touch as to what
> this conversation is about -- I seem to have not seen the original
> messages.

That's weird; I have no idea why you didn't see any characters at all.
Most other people saw them as suggested, and some saw them as weird character
combinations.

The purpose of the survey was to see what percentage of us use Email
programs that can view the ISO extended-ASCII character set. The point was
that, if the vast majority of us can in fact read these characters, then we
can probably feel better about using them.

The result was that most of us could view them, so, it's probably not wise
to do so routinely, but it's probably OK if it becomes sufficiently
inconvenient not to.
.
.
.

> What is a all this about HTML? That is not a suitable
> format for e-mail, is usually unreadable and I just delete such junk.

That depends on your Email program. Under Netscape Communicator, all of
your Email is written in HTML from the start, so you can do all of the text
formatting and insert graphics and sounds you'd like. It then has an option
to, on a recipient-by-recipient basis, to reduce it to raw text upon sending
it. But if your recipient also has Netscape or Internet Explorer (the two
most commonly-used internet programs), you'll both see all that formatting and
graphics and sound and all that.