On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 03:53:41PM +0100, Phil Taylor wrote: > Bernard Hill wrote: > > >In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I. Oppenheim > ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > > >>Watch out: 156 is decimal, while the number behind the > >>backslash should be the "octal code of the character", > >>which is 234 (and _not_ 243, which was a typo!) > > > >Octal! I've not used that for 30 years, I would never have considered it > >in a PC environment. > > Yes that's always astonished me too. I guess it's something we've > inherited from abc2mtext.
(abcmtext ?? abcmtex, I guess) I don't think so. Because abc2mtex used the TeX escape sequences, \"a etc, for anything that isn't 7-bit ASCII; that's where those character sequences came from. As I remember it, I think the obscure-numbers stuff started coming in when people started using 8-bit well-it-works-on-my-character-set codes directly in preference to the TeX sequences. > (Sorry guys, not wanting to start a platform-specific flame war, > but I'm having to learn to love unix, and man in particular is > driving me crazy.) Have a look in uk.comp.os.linux - there's an argument going on with lots of people saying how much nicer "man" is, compared with "info" :-) (I confess, I agree). -- Richard Robinson "The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
