On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 15:31:59 +0100, Brenda wrote: >On 10 Apr 2004, at 12:30, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> The bit in brackets I had put in as a pound sign and figures but it >> disappeared in transit. > >That's because the pound sign is in the upper ASCII set. Each ASCII >number represents one character. >The lower set (0-127) are standard across all platforms but the upper >set (128-255) vary according to the operating system and program in >use. > >0-127 include all the capital and lower case letters, numbers and the >commoner punctuation marks, but accented letters, pound, euro, yen etc >are all upper set and may well get changed or even disappear in >cyberspace. (Dollar sign $ is lower set, probably because of the >American dominance in computing). That's why in emails you should use >GBP or or write 'pounds' and 'pence'
Well ASCII stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange" (or something very similar), which explains the dollar sign. When ASCII was invented, there were other common competing standards for encoding letters. One of these is EBCDIC used by IBM mainframes. The creators of ASCII were making a standard for America and so chose characters appropriate to America. However it was inevitable that one way of encoding would become dominant to make communication easier. Some problems could have been avoided if a more international coding set had been enforced, but the dominance of ASCII was not a deliberate decision by anyone. The time has long passed when changing to a different international standard would have been feasible, so now we're stuck with ASCII and its consequences. -- The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. Quentin Crisp Steph Peters, Manchester, England [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scanned by WinProxy http://www.Ositis.com/ To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
