Re: Was: REQ: Star Shape. Now: Funny off topics...

Randy Ransom (ran...@ix.netcom.com) wrote --

>>>1.  What are the corrent names for these characters?
>>>~ ^ & | {} and #
>>
>>squiggle, pointee, backwards cursive "S", a line, squanchy brackets,
>>tic-tac-toe board...    am I right??? :)
>
>Here I am, leisurely reading alt.ascii-art, and suddenly we're having a pop
>quiz!  :)  Since Joan's already taken all the funny answers...

Not quite all; I was going to say --

  ~ toupee   ^ hat   & fat man   | thin man   { left ___ (naughty, naughty)
  } right ___ (naughty, naughty)   # flyswatter

>[small snip -- dski]  Umm...  I think it goes tilde, caret, ampersand,
>pipe, curly brackets (I'm not too sure about that one) and the pound sign.

"Tilde" -- good for you. Some people are trying to make that a "swung
dash" or approximation sign. Tilde it is.

"Caret" I dispute. It was originally called a circumflex, and I haven't
seen one that looks like the caret in my dictionary's table of symbols
(that one looks like an upside-down capital _V_; it is HUGE). ISO put
umlaut, acute accent, and cedilla in 8859-1, but not circumflex or grave,
'cuz ASCII already has those. (Personally, I would use the word "caret"
only for a handwritten correction mark.)

"Pipe" is the *function* of the vertical bar character on Unix and DOS
systems, but not its name. The name is "vertical bar." (ISO 8859-1
character 166 is a "*broken* vertical bar." An ASCII vertical bar --
character 124 -- can be broken or solid.)

"Curly brackets" -- The official name might be "braces."

"Pound sign" -- Danger! Some systems in the UK display a pound sterling
sign where folks in the US see a tic-tac-toe/naughts-and-crosses thingy.
Sure, both mean "pound," but there's a big difference between "five
pounds sterling" and "five pounds of nails." It might be best to call
that the "number sign"; I think it is used throughout the English-
speaking world to mean "number" as in "the #1 site for ASCII art."

By the way, anyone got an ANSI standard number for "extended ASCII"?
Until I see an ANSI or ISO doc that uses that term, I'm convinced there
ain't no such animal.

Dan Strychalski
dsk...@cameonet.cameo.com.tw

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