Hello all,
John Ball said:
You can also generate the British pounds symbol (£) by keeping the
"Alt" key
pressed and typing the numbers 1 5 6 on the numeric keypad (with Num Lock
off). This code seems to survive transmission over the Internet.
And Blanche Charles said:
My keyboard does not have the "£ " sign. However, for
those in the same
situation there is an ANSI code.
With the Number Lock on, using the NUMERIC KEYBOARD you hold down the ALT
key and enter 0163.
I'm going to be the "smart alec" here <g>.
This problem has been around for the last 35 years, since the original
ASCII code (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) was
devised in 1963. The ASCII code used a 7-bit byte (which can hold
the values from 0 to 127) to represent the upper and lower-case
letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9, the "blank" character,
the "delete" character, an assortment of punctuation marks, brackets,
etc., and 32 control codes (which are not usually "visible"). Since
ASCII was/is an American code, the pound sign was _not_ included as
one of those 128 possible characters. The original ASCII code
eventually became an internationally recognised universal standard.
However, in later years, when developers decided to expand the
original ASCII code into 8 bits, they created several different
"standards" for the new values between 128 and 255 - depending on the
manufacturer, the country, the product, etc. Even Microsoft DOS and
Microsoft Windows are different ! If you are using Windows, it also
depends on which "code page", if any, is triggered by your CONFIG.SYS
file.
The Internet has been around for nearly as long as the original ASCII
code - and it grew up using the 7-bit ASCII code as its standard for
information transmission. It still remains the standard; although
unofficially the majority of ISPs now seem to have drifted into
supporting 8-bit bytes. Nevertheless, if only one link in the chain
is running in 7-bit mode, then the result will be unpredictable.
Even more confusion can be created by the configuration of the
recipient's email software package. For example, by "tinkering" with
the configuration of my own email package, using different fonts to
display the message, I can display the various characters which
Blanche has quoted as something quite different from her intention.
Unfortunately, there is no simple solution. To cut a (very) long
story short, if you enter a character into your email by pressing the
ALT key and then typing in 128 or higher, most people will indeed see
what you intended, most of the time; but it cannot be guaranteed.
Some recipients will always see gobbledegook ! Which is why the
correct email convention is _still_ to write "UKP" (sometimes "GBP"),
or "pounds sterling" !
Regards,
Vic Roberts.
vroberts(a)netcomuk.co.uk