Re: Unit Scaling Prefixes: (was Birthday Wish)

[Phil Parker <PPARKER@TWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU>]

> Date:    Thu, 15 Apr 1999 15:16:42 -0500
> From:    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 assume you refer to PostScript fonts here. The ability to use them at all is
app-dependent.  If you fixed the apps and fonts, you could use multiple
keyboards -- one for each font (assuming your OS supported more than one).
   But between the keyboard and the app is another layer, called the code page
on PCs.  A developer could assume a different code page than you're using and
the results would be amusing at best.  I think there are still more languages
in the world than code pages.
   A pressed key sends a signal, the code page interprets it into ASCII or
some other convention, the result is passed to the app, and the app then
interprets that result as some character in the current alphabet.

> 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.
All three you mention can use PostScript fonts (Type I to be specific).
And those two PostScript fonts have consistent tables just to enable that
trick.  Compare Dingbats.

> To my knowledge, all applications use the same relationship
> between English and Greek letters.
No, only those that are basing their relationship on those two PostScript
fonts (or clones, such as TrueType or BaKoMa).  One could use a genuine Greek
font and it might have a completely different encoding.

> But even if they didn't, all applications would necessarily interpret a
> separate alpha key as alpha, etc.
Not necessarily; see, there's really no such thing as an alpha key.  It's ALL
in the software.

> What am I missing?
Font tables, code pages (or the equivalent on Unix, Mac, etc.), and key codes.
Also, key codes depend on the type of keyboard (AT, Sun, etc.).

---------------------------------------------
Phil Parker        pparker@twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu
Random quote for this second:
  Parkinson's Fourth Law:
  The number of people in any working group tends to increase
  regardless of the amount of work to be done.