WEST-RIDING-L Archives

Archiver > WEST-RIDING > 2003-01 > 1041890135


From: Tim Powys-Lybbe <>
Subject: Re: [WRY] Pound sign
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 21:55:35 GMT
References: <57.166faa7f.2b4aa45f@aol.com>
In-Reply-To: <57.166faa7f.2b4aa45f@aol.com>


In message <>
wrote:

> Many of the messages I pick up from the list have 'A3' where there obviously
> should be a pound sign. Is this just me or do others have this problem? If
> they do, then I suggest everyone sending data to the list should write
> 'pounds' rather than use the pound sign.

The normal convention is to use ukp.

> I suspect it's something to do with the slightly different character sets
> used on computers set up for different countries.

It's to do with the way that characters are consturcted. Normal
characters are sent as numbers with values from 32 to 127; but currency
signs, apart from dollar, are sent as numbers in the range 160 (or 128)
to 255. There are a load of other symbols in the 160 to 255 range as
well, including the various accented characters. Some Internet Service
providers won't allow the higher numbers (sometimes called "top bit
set") and they are stripped off. It may be that mailing list
operators do moe of the stripping as I've seen £ (ukp) signs come
through on newsgroups.

In the early days the internet was strictly for character values below
128.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe
For a patchwork of bygones: http://powys.org


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