Apostrophes and foreign systems

Hi everybody!

I wanted to comment on a problem I'm having with ascii-drawings in my
system (well, not just mine, also in most systems configured for
Spanish languaje).
As you may know, in Spanish there are a few special characters:
accented vowels, "�", and others.
(I don`t know what you'll be seeing between the quotes above, but
there should be a letter just like an "n" with a tilde on top. With a
non-Spanish keyboard you can type it as Alt-164)
So far so good, I try to avoid this characters when drawing. But still
I'm left with an annoying problem with apostrophes. Drawings which
have them don't seem right (in my system). I can redraw them till they
look right, but then I guess YOU out there will see them wrong.

These: [�'`] look just like [/|\] but smaller (in my system).

This is the head of the Dragon in George James sig, for an example.
The eye and lip on the right don't look right (in my system). They are
vertical, not slant like in the left side

LEFT    /   \   RIGHT (my point of view, not the dragon's)
       ((   )) 
        ))_((   
       (/\|/\)
        \`|'/
        (o o) 
        `\Y/' 
             

Now I redraw them.........

LEFT    /   \   RIGHT
       ((   )) 
        ))_((   
       (/\|/\)
        \`|�/
        (o o) 
        `\Y/� 

Which looks perfectly right and symmetrical (in my system)
(but I'm afraid I'm using a non-standard character)

Any words of wisdom on that? Thanks in advance!



Any words of wisdom on that, please?
Thanks in advance

       .---. "Friends come and go but enemies accumulate"
      _\___/_   __________      .__  
jgs    )\_/(    \______   \____ |__| __________   ____  
jm    /~~~~~\    |     ___/  _ \|  |/  ___/  _ \ /    \ 
     /  .-.  \   |    |  (  (_) )  |\___ (  (_) )   |  \
    /  (@.@)  \  |____|   \____/|__/______>____/|___|__/
   / 8=.|m|.=8 \ 
  (  8=�`"�`=8  )              <jmp...@idecnet.com>
   `-----------�

Poison wrote:
[ ... ]
> These: [�'`] look just like [/|\] but smaller (in my system).
[ ... ]
> Which looks perfectly right and symmetrical (in my system)
> (but I'm afraid I'm using a non-standard character)
[ ... ]
> Any words of wisdom on that? Thanks in advance!

Well, wisdom is such a subjective thing ... :^)  However,
my two cents worth is - please don't use them.  They go really
crazy on my system.  For example, your three characters which
resemble small [/|\] characters, on my system, the "/" gets
thrown away because it can't figure out what to do with it.
The "|" character becomes an apostrophe and the "\" becomes
a grave accent.  My personal non-favorite non-standard
character, however, is the little circle at the top of the
line.  (I am guessing this is a degree symbol.)  It really
messes up the look of things by the time I get it.

Oh well, you asked.  :^)

Sandy

"Saschi" (sas...@thundernet.com) wrote of the Macintosh --

> (option n - then type n - voila! you get � !!!!)

How very INTUITIVE! Thanks, I'll stick with Ctrl-P, n, ~, the way it's
done in WordPerfect (on x86 machines; dunno about the Mac version).

Actually, many of the Mac's Option-key combinations are very clever and
make a lot of sense. A few of them, though -- like Option-n, n -- are
definitely for the birds. The character set, although it beats IBM's
"code page 437" hands down, is a clunker. Apple should do something
about giving the Mac a *fully* ISO 8859-1 compliant character set. Even
DOS has that (though you have to get it from Europe by FTP; heaven
forbid MS or IBM should pay more than lip service to international
standards...).

      .---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.---.----.
      |` ~|1 !|2 @|3 #|4 $|5 %|6 ^|7 &|8 *|9 (|0 )|- _|= +|Bksp|
      :----.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.---:
      |Tab | Q | W | E | R | T | Y | U | I | O | P |[ {|] }|\ ||
      :-----.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`---:
      |Ctrl | A | S | D | F | G | H | J | K | L |; :|' "|Return|
      :------.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`.--`--.---:
      |Shift | Z | X | C | V | B | N | M |, <|. >|/ ?|Shift|Fnc|
      :------:---`--.'---------------------.-----:---`-.---:---:
      | Meta | Alt  |   Dan Strychalski    | Cmd | Opt |Del|Esc|
      `------'-----dsk...@cameonet.cameo.com.tw----`-----'---`---'

"Poison" (jmp...@idecnet.com) wrote --

> This is the head of the Dragon in George James sig, for an example....

[snip -- DS]

> Now I redraw them.........

[snip -- DS]

> Which looks perfectly right and symmetrical (in my system)
> (but I'm afraid I'm using a non-standard character)

Well, those characters are part of a standard -- ISO 8859-1 -- but that
standard came late to computers and is not universally followed. You can
be sure that on some people's computers they will come out as something
totally weird.

Stick with ASCII and don't look for perfection. That's why we call it
ASCII _art_. The concept of perfection doesn't apply to art. Or you can
say that anything that is art is by definition perfect in itself. Don't
get _too_ bogged down in details -- whatever you do will look slightly
different on most viewers' machines anyway. Stick to ASCII and
concentrate on the joy of creation.

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

> As you may know, in Spanish there are a few special characters:
> accented vowels, "�", and others.
> (I don`t know what you'll be seeing between the quotes above, but
> there should be a letter just like an "n" with a tilde on top. 

Looks fine to me and I have a US standard keyboard and machine.

With a
> non-Spanish keyboard you can type it as Alt-164)

Well there is your problem! Your using the wrong kind of computer!
If you were using a Mac you'd not be having this problem!!! MAC is
global!!! 

(option n - then type n - voila! you get � !!!!)

> Well there is your problem! Your using the wrong kind of computer!
> If you were using a Mac you'd not be having this problem!!! MAC is
> global!!! 

> (option n - then type n - voila! you get � !!!!)

I hope that people without macs saw this... haha.
says: '(option n - then type n - voila! you get q !!!!)'  HAHA!
--

              ___  _____
            .'/,-Y"     "~-.
            l.Y             ^.
            /\               _\_      "Doh!"
           i            ___/"   "\
           |          /"   "\   o !
           l         ]     o !__./          Dan Larkin
            \ _  _    \.___./    "~\         Colorado School of Mines
             X \/ \            ___./           dla...@mines.edu
            ( \ ___.   _..--~~"   ~`-.
             ` Z,--   /               \
               \__.  (   /       ______)
                 \   l  /-----~~" /
                  Y   \          /
                  |    "x______.^
                  |           \      
                  j            Y

Dan Larkin (dla...@moran.Mines.EDU) posted --

> > Well there is your problem! Your using the wrong kind of computer!
> > If you were using a Mac you'd not be having this problem!!! MAC is
> > global!!!
>
> > (option n - then type n - voila! you get � !!!!)
>
> I hope that people without macs saw this... haha.
> says: '(option n - then type n - voila! you get q !!!!)'  HAHA!

Take it from someone who has an Apple II, a Mac, an MS-DOS machine, and a
shell account on a Unix machine. On the Mac, Option+n followed by n sends
the value 150 to the display system, causing a lowercase n with tilde to
appear on the screen. The message you quoted was sent with software that
converted the 150 to the value 241, which is the value that ISO 8859-1,
the most widely used eight-bit text encoding method on the Internet, uses
for a lowercase n with tilde. And that's what I see right now. On my DOS
machine. Connected to a Unix machine.

The problem in your case is that your machine, or some machine somewhere
between yours and that of the sender, is not "eight bit clean." It zeroed
out the high bit of the transmitted byte, reducing the value expressed by
that byte by exactly 128. 241 minus 128 is 113.

Check an ASCII chart to see what character appears when a byte with the
value 113 is sent to the screen.

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