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Europa-List: off-topic: Re: Display of the Pound Symbol

Subject: Europa-List: off-topic: Re: Display of the Pound Symbol
From: Rowland Carson <rowil@clara.net>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 18:47:34


>Hi Bruce - and thanks for your long and detailed dissertation on Mime  errors
>etc. - in particular with reference to the Pound sign.
>
>In furture if I want to insert this I will write the piece in Word  and then
>cut and paste into the email.  This should work????

Patrick - no!

I think you have missed the vital part of Bruce's explanation - the 
UK pound sign is not included in the 128-character US ASCII set. 
However you contrive to insert that character (which will be 
different character codes depending on various features of your own 
machine) in your message, it will still NOT get transmitted as-is by 
e-mail.

It's like sending a wing spar by railway wagon; if your spar is 
longer than the standard wagon, a bit will get chopped off before the 
rail journey. If the packing agent doesn't include instructions on 
how to repair the now 2-piece spar, or if the unpacking agent 
discards those instructions (the case described by Bruce) then you as 
final recipient don't even know you're not getting the full original 
spar at your end.

For unambiguous representation of the UK sterling pound sign without 
writing those words out in full, many people use the abbreviation 
"UKP". I have seen "L" occasionally but despite it being the obvious 
abbreviation of "Libra" (as in Librae, Solidi, Denarii - LSD) I don't 
know if that would be widely interpreted correctly. Less commonly, 
and probably more confusingly, some use the US pound sign (#, binary 
010 0011, octal 043, decimal 035, hex 23) instead. Mac people in UK 
generate this by option-3; I imagine there is some similar facility 
available in other operating systems and hardware. Obviously, in the 
USA and its dominions, shift-3 generates #, not UK pound sign.

Hope this helps!

regards

Rowland
-- 
| Wilma & Rowland Carson <http://home.clara.net/rowil/>
| <rowil@clara.net>          ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...



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