Re: Unit Scaling Prefixes: (was Birthday Wish)

[paul o johnson <pojhome@FLASH.NET>]

Now wait a minute, Phil. All applications by all developers interpret the A key as
the Roman letter A in English fonts and as the Greek letter alpha in Symbol font,
do they not? I routinely use only three word processing applications, but this is
true in all three of them: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, and Adobe
Pagemaker. When I want a sigma, I type S, select it and change it to Symbol font,
and I get a sigma. To my knowledge, all applications use the same relationship
between English and Greek letters.

But even if they didn't, all applications would necessarily interpret a separate
alpha key as alpha, etc.

What am I missing?

poj


Phil Parker wrote:

> > Date:    Mon, 12 Apr 1999 09:00:14 -0500
> > From:    paul o johnson <pojhome@FLASH.NET>
> >
> > Why doesn't someone invent a scientific keyboard having separate keys for the
> > more common Greek letters?
> Because it wouldn't help; how Greek letters are represented internally varies
> from one application to another -- there's no standard.  If there were, such
> a keyboard would be quite helpful.
>
> ---------------------------------------------
> Phil Parker        pparker@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu
> Random quote for this second:
>   Optimization hinders evolution.