On Jul 15, 2011, at 2:29 PM, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
> On 07/15/2011 01:37 PM, Doug Ewell wrote:
>> How do I talk about U+2420 SYMBOL FOR SPACE in plain text? Other than
>> the way I just did, I mean.
>
> This "infinite recursion" argument doesn't hold up.
Those of us old enough to recall IBM's old 6-bit BCDIC code (a retronym -- it
was known as "BCD" in its own day) will remember the overstricken b/ character
used to represent the Substitute Blank character, the overstricken =| character
for Record Mark, and others. (Annoyingly enough, these and some other BCDIC
graphics are not covered by Unicode, which must be a problem for historians.) I
cannot bring to mind any infinite regress happening at the time.
(The Substitute Blank, for the curious, was used when recording character data
on 7-track tape with even parity. The standard Blank character, all zeroes,
could not be safely recorded, so it was translated to Substitute Blank, and
Substitute Blank was translated back to Blank on reading. Binary 7-track tape
was recorded with odd parity to avoid this problem, but was less reliable than
even parity.)
--
John W Kennedy
"Though a Rothschild you may be
In your own capacity,
As a Company you've come to utter sorrow--
But the Liquidators say,
'Never mind--you needn't pay,'
So you start another company to-morrow!"
-- Sir William S. Gilbert. "Utopia Limited"
