On 2007-12-22, spaco wrote:
Ever want to use the degree symbol instead of typing the word "degree"?

If yes:

With "Numlock" ON. hold down the alt key and type 0176 (USING THE KEYPAD).

°
°
°
°

Of course -- there are other problems which can result from
this. That is part of an extension to the ACSII character set (the
standardized part is all with the parity bit clear, and the character
which you generated has the parity bit set. (Octal code 260 for that,)

With a plain ASCII terminal set to ignore parity (as is common)
that would display as '0' (the numeral zero).

With various other systems (including Windows boxes with
different charactersets selected, including different national
charactersets), it is possible that you will get other characters
displayed.

And to *generate* the character on different keyboards, and
different systems, you use different methods. For example, on a Sun
keyboard, you hit the "compose" key, followed by an underscore '_',
followed by either an upper case 'O' or a lower-case 'o'. (Yes, they
both generate the same character.

Interestingly enough, the character 'º' in *my* system is a
different code -- octal 272, decimal 186, or hex BA. *That* shows as
the degrees symbol in my eiditor, while what you entered displays in the
editor as \260, the code for part of the non-printable range. It *does*
show as you intended in the email client and pager, but not in the
editor which I use.

It is for reasons like this that I normally avoid posting to
usenet using *any* character beyond what is found on the keycaps. That
way, I know that everyone will see it the same.

When I post -- I want *everyone* who is interested to be able to
read what I've posted -- not to show off tricks at the keyboard for
generating characters outside the range of standard 7-bit ASCII.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
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