"Rob Morley" wrote in message
t...
In article ,
ess says...
snip
Just pointing out that instead of typing 1.5mm^2 or 1.5(sq)mm you can type
²
by holding down the Alt key while typing 253 on the number pad on the
right
of the keyboard like this: 1.5mm². 252 is cubed ³, 248 is degrees ° and
171
is ?. There's lots more.


|Usenet was originally a 7-bit medium, and 8-bit characters won't display
|in software that expects text to be basic ASCII. There isn't a single
|standard for an extension to the basic ASCII set anyway, so even if
|software is 8-bit capable it won't necessarily display the character
|that the author intended.

Not that I fully understand this, but I think these Alt-xxx characters are
indeed part of the basic ASCII set. It's just that there aren't enough keys
on an English QWERTY keyboard to allot one key to every available character.
Is that not right?