In uk.d-i-y, Peter Taylor wrote:
"Rob Morley" wrote in message news:MPG.1de615c336
...
In article ,
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?

Yes, that's not right. Type ASCII into Google to find out more.

Here are the displayable characters of the basic ASCII character set:

! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; = ?
@ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~

The first character (above 0 and to the left of !) is the space
character, which might or might be described as "displayable" :-)

--
Mike Barnes