On 2003.08.16, 15:32, Philippe Verdy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I suppose that the difference was needed to disambiguate scientific > text transmitted in uppercase-only form on poor devices unable to > represent lowercase letters, and where a text like "KJ/K" would > have been difficult to interpret as "kJ/K" i.e. kilojoules per kelvin.
OK for UC-only poor devices, but quality typeset is supposed to keep some lower case letters even in "all caps" -- such as, f.i., the "c" or "ac" of scottish names starting with "Mac", or SI preffixes. Note that "m" stands for milli (10E-3) while "M" for "mega" (10E6), an essential difference -- and the recently adopted preffixes for >|21| magnitudes use precisely case to mark the signum difference (q.v. -- cannot check right now). (Anyway, the above "10E6", brings back the topic of letters as numbers: hexadecimal notation and >9 hack digit symbols, roman numerals, and this weird U+0045 standing for U+00D7 U+0031 U+0030 <sup>...) -- ____. Ant�nio MARTINS-Tuv�lkin, | ()| <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |####| R. Laureano de Oliveira, 64 r/c esq. | PT-1885-050 MOSCAVIDE (LRS) N�o me invejo de quem tem | +351 934 821 700 carros, parelhas e montes | http://www.tuvalkin.web.pt/bandeira/ s� me invejo de quem bebe | http://pagina.de/bandeiras/ a �gua em todas as fontes |
