Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
A Minsky is a polygon in R?. It is completely specified by two real parameters, ? and ?, and any one of its vertex points.
Sigh. As has been mentioned before, non-ASCII characters all get turned into question marks in the digest, often rendering messages incomprehensible. Please don't use them. Thanks. Presumably this is done by the digestifying software since there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes. Or rather there are many incompatible standard interpretations for eight-bit codes. ("The great thing about standards is there are so many to choose from.") Each message has headers describing which standard is used, but if two messages with different standards end up in the same digest, which header line should the digest message header use? Any reasonable solution would be a lot of work for our listmaster. What's far less work is for everyone to not use non-ASCII characters, or to spell them out (e.g. "pi" instead of the single Greek letter). Thanks.
Particularly since "there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes", I'm not sure which characters on my Mac count as ASCII. What about accented Latin, like ü, é, à, ô, etc. ??? Thanks, Dan
On May 3, 2015, at 11:15 AM, Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
A Minsky is a polygon in R?. It is completely specified by two real parameters, ? and ?, and any one of its vertex points.
Sigh. As has been mentioned before, non-ASCII characters all get turned into question marks in the digest, often rendering messages incomprehensible. Please don't use them. Thanks.
Presumably this is done by the digestifying software since there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes. . . .
Keith F. Lynch
ASCII are the 7-bit codes, 0-127. In the days of the teletype, the 8th bit was used for parity. -- Gene From: Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, May 3, 2015 12:16 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Non-ASCII Particularly since "there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes", I'm not sure which characters on my Mac count as ASCII. What about accented Latin, like ü, é, à, ô, etc. ??? Thanks, Dan
On May 3, 2015, at 11:15 AM, Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
A Minsky is a polygon in R?. It is completely specified by two real parameters, ? and ?, and any one of its vertex points.
Sigh. As has been mentioned before, non-ASCII characters all get turned into question marks in the digest, often rendering messages incomprehensible. Please don't use them. Thanks.
Presumably this is done by the digestifying software since there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes. . . .
Keith F. Lynch
So use only codes 32 through 126 here http://ascii.cl/ (I suppose). On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 2:51 PM, Eugene Salamin via math-fun < math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
ASCII are the 7-bit codes, 0-127. In the days of the teletype, the 8th bit was used for parity. -- Gene
From: Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, May 3, 2015 12:16 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Non-ASCII
Particularly since "there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes", I'm not sure which characters on my Mac count as ASCII.
What about accented Latin, like ü, é, à, ô, etc. ???
Thanks,
Dan
On May 3, 2015, at 11:15 AM, Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
A Minsky is a polygon in R?. It is completely specified by two real parameters, ? and ?, and any one of its vertex points.
Sigh. As has been mentioned before, non-ASCII characters all get turned into question marks in the digest, often rendering messages incomprehensible. Please don't use them. Thanks.
Presumably this is done by the digestifying software since there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes. . . .
Keith F. Lynch
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
Before that, wasn't there a 5-bit Baudot code? It is ridiculous and inexcusable for the digest to destroy, rather than transmit, characters that it doesn't recognize. Fix the digest. --rwg On 2015-05-03 17:01, James Buddenhagen wrote:
So use only codes 32 through 126 here http://ascii.cl/ (I suppose).
On Sun, May 3, 2015 at 2:51 PM, Eugene Salamin via math-fun < math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
ASCII are the 7-bit codes, 0-127. In the days of the teletype, the 8th bit was used for parity. -- Gene
From: Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, May 3, 2015 12:16 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Non-ASCII
Particularly since "there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes", I'm not sure which characters on my Mac count as ASCII.
What about accented Latin, like ü, é, à, ô, etc. ???
Thanks,
Dan
On May 3, 2015, at 11:15 AM, Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
A Minsky is a polygon in R?. It is completely specified by two real parameters, ? and ?, and any one of its vertex points.
Sigh. As has been mentioned before, non-ASCII characters all get turned into question marks in the digest, often rendering messages incomprehensible. Please don't use them. Thanks.
Presumably this is done by the digestifying software since there's no standard interpretation for eight-bit codes. . . .
Keith F. Lynch
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
I don't think it's fair to blame the digesting process. GIGO applies. There are (mostly ignored) standards for encoding non-ascii content such that at least in principle it can be correctly interpreted. Even if the unusual character codes made it through the program chain intact, the endpoint that displays them would have no clue what to do with them. In fact, I'll give even odds that that is exactly what's happening - the digest contains an unusual ascii code, and the program being used to display the message shows you a ?
participants (6)
-
Dan Asimov -
Dave Dyer -
Eugene Salamin -
James Buddenhagen -
Keith F. Lynch -
rwg