[WIN] Re: Secret Symbols
Thomas -
Although I'm very slow getting around to this, and see you've
already received several replies, there seem to be a couple of
points that've been omitted or obscured:
"Accessing" the mysterious symbols, using the methods already
described, is only part of the issue. Getting your software to
display them on a user's machine is much more problematical.
Those methods described in other replies simply allow you to
enter an ASCII code into the text stream, but do not specify a
character set, or font, which is going to be either specified by
the software doing the "displaying part" of the process, or,
lacking such a specification, supplied by the OS defaults. The
designer of the font decides what codes will match what - if any
- pictures, and the "little squares" are commonly - but not
universally - used to indicate a "blank" code (one with no
matching picture). The no "matching picture" situation describes,
for instance, the situation for the first 32 ASCII codes (often
called "Control" or "Escape" codes) in almost all common text
fonts, because those code numbers were "inherited" from the days
of the Teletype machine, and were used, not to print characters,
but to control the machine. Additionally, many font sets are
largely empty - there are no "pictures" for many of the possible
codes. Other font sets include no alphabetic characters at all -
just pictures.
Never thought I'd ever say this, but David Cuny's reply is, at
least partially, incorrect - Windows _can_ display the symbols if
an appropriate font is selected. Many of the Euphoria files
apparently do use "DOS fonts" (aka OEM fonts, or even more
confusingly ASCII fonts). All versions of Windows include one or
two of these (one, I seem to recall, is "Fixedsys"), but Windows
defaults to ANSI fonts, which normally don't display the symbols
expected by a user of DOS fonts - at least not with the same
ASCII codes.
To sum up, using your editor, you enter the ASCII code that
displays the symbol you're interested in, and the person running
your code, or reading your text file, sees whatever symbols, if
any, match the same ASCII code in whatever font, he, his
application, or his OS has decided to use. Luckily, there are
some conventions, and usually all users of a single platform will
see almost the same thing. It's when you cross platforms that
things get hairy. (And, oh yeah - if you cross language barriers
- English to Chinese, say - you're going to see major problems.
And we didn't even get into Unicode, yet.) As you might imagine
all of this can get very messy on the Internet.
Hope that doesn't tell you way more than you wanted to know - at
least you'll have a clue if something doesn't display as you
expected. If you aren't sick of the subject, just ask more
questions and I'll give it another shot.
Ben
Paul Kerslake wrote:
> HI all, It has come to my attention that the PC has it's
> own "secret language", I don't mean binary though. I mean the
> symbols I have seen like: , oh, it seems the copy/paste
> trick doesn't work here. Well, I mean the little happy face and
> the heart and club etc. I finally figured these ones out. But,
> one, or rather more than one. The ======== lines in AGBTE2's
> D1807a.ex are what I'm referring to. These neat little lines
> with their well formed and linked corners and the == are linked
> with no spaces. Oh yes, and those little squares. Woudst you be
> so kind as to tell me how to access these mysterious
> symbols? Thenks,Thomas Kerslake ---------/\=======
>
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