Correct pronunciation of 'ethernet'

[Billy D'Augustine]

Every time I say the word 'ethernet' to my friend, he rides me for
pronouncing it incorrectly, while I maintain that there is no
reall 'correct' way to say it.

I say it with a long e on the first e (eh-ther), while he states that
it should be with a short e (ea-ther).

I think its similar to words like 'either' and 'leisure', where some
pronounce it one way, and others another way.

--
Billy D'Augustine az...@spatula.rent.com

"I am the politician, and I decide your fate"

[Matt Welsh]

In article <1992Oct30....@spatula.rent.com> az...@spatula.rent.com (Billy D'Augustine) writes:
>Every time I say the word 'ethernet' to my friend, he rides me for
>pronouncing it incorrectly, while I maintain that there is no
>reall 'correct' way to say it.

This is off the subject (I'm good at that), but here there's a group of
technicians who were assigned to install Ethernet cards in student's machines
on the network pilot project (basically, students pay about $200 a year for an
Ethernet card and net access from their rooms). Generally the techs would
install the cards while the students themselves wern't there, so that the
Ethernet cards and software would 'magically' appear on their machines during
the day. The students affectionately dubbed the techs "The Ether Bunny".

I thought it was cute.

mdw

--
Matt Welsh m...@tc.cornell.edu +1 607 253 2737
Systems Programmer, Cornell Theory Center
"Yow!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!"

[Steve Davis]

EEEEEE (hard th) THER NET

Rhymes with "ping her head".

Stratocaster
--
Steve Davis (I'm a student, not a spokesperson!)
st...@cis.ksu.edu - Kansas State University - Manhattan KS

The most important freedom in a democracy, is the freedom of CHOICE.

[Neal Miller]

st...@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Steve Davis) writes:

>EEEEEE (hard th) THER NET

>Rhymes with "ping her head".

Don't ever write poetry. ;-)

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neal Miller | "Why not go mad?" | mill...@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
Clarkson University | - Ford Prefect | da...@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Barry Margolin]

In article <1992Oct30....@spatula.rent.com> az...@spatula.rent.com (Billy D'Augustine) writes:

>Every time I say the word 'ethernet' to my friend, he rides me for
>pronouncing it incorrectly, while I maintain that there is no
>reall 'correct' way to say it.

I've only ever heard it pronounced one way. It's just a combination of the
English words "ether" and "net", with no change in either's pronunciation.
My dictionary only gives one pronunciation for each of them.

>I say it with a long e on the first e (eh-ther), while he states that
>it should be with a short e (ea-ther).

It should be a long e as in "we" (you seem to have long and short
interchanged), and a soft "th" as in "think". And don't even think of
pronouncing the last syllable as in "chevrolet".
--
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

bar...@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar

[Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger]

In article <1992Oct30....@spatula.rent.com>, az...@spatula.rent.com (Billy D'Augustine) writes...

>Every time I say the word 'ethernet' to my friend, he rides me for
>pronouncing it incorrectly, while I maintain that there is no
>reall 'correct' way to say it.
>
>I say it with a long e on the first e (eh-ther), while he states that
>it should be with a short e (ea-ther).
>
>I think its similar to words like 'either' and 'leisure', where some
>pronounce it one way, and others another way.
>

It should be pronounced similar to Easter.

I know, I asked the Ether bunny once, and she told me!!!!!!

Frank R. Borger - Physicist __ Internet: Fr...@rover.uchicago.edu
Michael Reese - Univ. of Chicago |___ Phone : 312-791-8075 fax : 567-7455
Center for Radiation Therapy | |_) _
| \|_) What luck for rulers that men do
"Birthplace of Softball" |_) not think. - Adolph Hitler

[Cliff Heller]

In <1992Oct30....@spatula.rent.com> az...@spatula.rent.com (Billy D'Augustine) writes:

>I say it with a long e on the first e (eh-ther), while he states that
>it should be with a short e (ea-ther).

your phonetic representations are completely ambiguous as well.
-
eh is a short e sound anyway, a long e would be (ee-ther) (e - ther)
.
a short e would be (eh-ther) (e - ther)

>I think its similar to words like 'either' and 'leisure', where some
>pronounce it one way, and others another way.

- ^ - ^
(e-ther) and (i-ther)

--
/ \ Reverend fnord | "King Kong died for your sins!"
/ \ fn...@panix.com |
/ <0> \ | "Don't just eat a hamburger,
/_______\ Church of Obfuscatology, Inc. | eat the HELL out of it!"

[Jason Balicki (KodaK)]

In article <1992Nov3.1...@panix.com> fn...@panix.com (Cliff Heller) writes:
> - ^ - ^
>(e-ther) and (i-ther)
>--
> / \ Reverend fnord | "King Kong died for your sins!"
> / \ fn...@panix.com |
> / <0> \ | "Don't just eat a hamburger,
> /_______\ Church of Obfuscatology, Inc. | eat the HELL out of it!"

Ok, we've established the correct way to say ethernet: memumbleernet.

My question is: Where did the name come from in the first place?

If this is in the FAQ then I grant one and only one of you permission to
come kick me in the teeth until my toes bleed.

--Jason Balicki
ko...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu

[Lance Gay]

In article <Bx88o...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> ko...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Jason Balicki (KodaK)) writes:
>
>Ok, we've established the correct way to say ethernet: memumbleernet.
>
>My question is: Where did the name come from in the first place?
>

In the article "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer
Networks" by Robert M. Metcalfe and David R. Boggs of Xerox PARC (CACM,
July 1976) is the following paragraph:

Ethernet is named for the historical luminiferous ether through which
electromagnetic raadiations were once alleged to propagate. Like an
Aloha radio transmitter, an Ethernet transmitter broadcasts
completely-addressed transmitter synchronous bit sequences called
packets onto the Ether and hopes that they are heard by the intended
receivers. The Ether is a logically passive medium for the
propagation of digital signals and can be constructed using any
number of media including coaxial cables, twisted pairs, and optical
fibers.

The "Aloha" mentioned above refers to the Aloha Network packet radio
system set up the by University of Hawaii.

Lance J. Gay Internet: g...@venice.sedd.trw.com
TRW Systems Engineering & Development Div. Phone: 310-764-3988
Carson, CA 90746

[Lon Stowell]

In article <Bx88o...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> ko...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Jason Balicki (KodaK)) writes:
>
>Ok, we've established the correct way to say ethernet: memumbleernet.
>
>My question is: Where did the name come from in the first place?
>

Allegedly from the "luminiferous aether" said to pervade the
universe prior to Michelson-Morley et. al.

>If this is in the FAQ then I grant one and only one of you permission to
>come kick me in the teeth until my toes bleed.
>

I'd be extremely surprised if TNHD didn't have an entry for
same...so if it does, we can let Eric nominate a kicker...and if
it DOESN'T, then you get to kick Eric... >:-)

[One of these days, I really ought to buy the thing...maybe when
Eric needs a new PC...]

[Clare West]

lsto...@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Lon Stowell) writes:
>ko...@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Jason Balicki (KodaK)) writes:
>
>>If this is in the FAQ then I grant one and only one of you permission to
>>come kick me in the teeth until my toes bleed.
>>
> I'd be extremely surprised if TNHD didn't have an entry for
> same...so if it does, we can let Eric nominate a kicker...and if
> it DOESN'T, then you get to kick Eric... >:-)

If its in TNHD then its not under ether... (essentials is followed by
evil) should it be there tho? I think so.

clare

--
| & Official Welcomer & Hello, my name is Inigo
,--. | --. ,--. ,--. & of the RFA & Montoya. You killed my
| | ,--| | |--' & BigSis to Kristiina, & father. Perpare to die.
`--' " `--" " `--' & Eric and Chris & -- The Princess Bride

[Arun Welch]

Others have already told where the name comes from, but I've got
another bit of folklore to add. On the door to my office is an
nth-generation copy of a memo from a Mr. R. Z. Bachrach, who I was told
was once a Xerox VP, to Boggs and Metcalf. It goes into great detail
telling them how ethernet just won't work and is generally a bad idea.
It's chock full of statements like "I have read with dismay your
presentation", "you have chosen a coined jargon utilizing discredited
scientific conceptual expression in which to frame your ideas.", and,
my favorite, "You should seriously study how the telephone companies
handle this problem." It's quite possibly the funniest memo I've ever
seen. If there's enough interest I'll type it in.

...arun
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arun Welch
Lisp Systems Programmer, Lab for AI Research, Ohio State University
we...@cis.ohio-state.edu

[Eric S. Raymond]

In <184...@pyramid.pyramid.com> Lon Stowell wrote:
> I'd be extremely surprised if TNHD didn't have an entry for
> same...so if it does, we can let Eric nominate a kicker...and if
> it DOESN'T, then you get to kick Eric... >:-)

# # # #
# # # #### # # ## ## ######
# # # # # # # # # # # #
### # # #### # # # #####
# # # # # # # # #
# # # # # # # # # #
# # # #### # # # # ######

...there's no such entry. However, I believe the "luminiferous aether"
etymology is correct.

> [One of these days, I really ought to buy the thing...maybe when
> Eric needs a new PC...]

Oh, foo. New PCs aren't *that* cheap. Yet...
--
Eric S. Raymond <e...@snark.thyrsus.com>

[Alan Braggins]

>>>>> On Fri, 6 Nov 1992 03:12:01 GMT, cw...@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Clare West) said:

> If its in TNHD then its not under ether... (essentials is followed by
> evil) should it be there tho? I think so.

Is it really jargon?

":About This File:
=================

This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures
of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for
background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary;"

For example, there is an entry for DRECNET, but not DECNET.
Ethernet is mentioned in several entries, but I have never heard it called
anything else.
--
Alan Braggins, al...@sdl.mdcbbs.com, abra...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Shape Data - A division of EDS-Scicon Limited. Cambridge, UK +44-223-316673
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
"My employer does not necessarily share my views - but I'm working on it."

[Lamar Owen]

we...@sacral.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arun Welch) writes:

> handle this problem." It's quite possibly the funniest memo I've ever
> seen. If there's enough interest I'll type it in.
>
> ...arun

Oh, please do!!! Give me something to show some of the other guys here...

--

Lamar Owen, Systems Consultant, GE Lighting Systems, Hendersonville, NC
***********************************************************************
Opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not reflect policy
or opinions of the General Electric Company or its subsidiaries.
***********************************************************************

[eezz...@gmail.com]

For my part it makes more sense to say aether net, like feather net. Because ether is a chemical, like starting fluid. Where as aether describes a place in the air, or has a connotation as to the air, or describes the space in the universe. So it makes more sense to say aether net because the internet connections travel in an aether like place or in the air (literally when you talk about wireless and cell networks and radio waves or 5G, 4G, etc...). Where as ether is an anistetic, or starting fluid, a chemical. I'll always say aether net, just my preference. It makes more sense.

[Dan Espen]

eezz...@gmail.com writes:

> For my part it makes more sense to say aether net, like feather

> net. ...

“When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it
means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet

The idea was first documented in a memo that Metcalfe wrote on May 22,
1973, where he named it after the luminiferous aether once postulated to
exist as an "omnipresent, completely-passive medium for the propagation
of electromagnetic waves.

--
Dan Espen

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 04:12:18 -0800 (PST)
eezz...@gmail.com wrote:

> For my part it makes more sense to say aether net, like feather net.

I never knew that aether was pronounced differently than ether,
certainly it is the former that is being referred to in the networking
technology.

I have occasionally seen the phrase "luminiferous ether" in print
so perhaps the spelling distinction is less clear-cut than you assume.

> Because ether is a chemical, like starting fluid. Where as aether

A family of chemicals if you're being precise about it, two alkane
groups connected by an oxygen atom IIRC (A level chemistry was a while ago).

> describes a place in the air, or has a connotation as to the air, or

It was the medium in which light was believed to vibrate.

> describes the space in the universe. So it makes more sense to say aether
> net because the internet connections travel in an aether like place or in

Ethernet predates the internet by quite some time. Bob Metcalf
invented the first version of ethernet in 1973, at about the same time Vint
Cerf and Bob Kahn created IP and TCP, but it wasn't until NSFNET in the mid
80s that there was an internet.

> the air (literally when you talk about wireless and cell networks and
> radio waves or 5G, 4G, etc...).

None of these are ethernet.

Many years ago I did see an open air ethernet network in use
connecting warehouse picking robots together, each had a stubby aerial
connected to a 10Mbps co-ax ethernet card via a small RF amplifier.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/

[JimP]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 08:11:16 -0500, Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com>
wrote:

There is a new device called a 'feather' put out by Adafruit, and
maybe other companies, that has led to their confusion. One on there
that mentions Bluefruit, is a Bluetooth device.

https://www.adafruit.com/?q=feather


--
Jim

[Mike Spencer]

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:

> On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 04:12:18 -0800 (PST)
> eezz...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> For my part it makes more sense to say aether net, like feather net.
>
> I never knew that aether was pronounced differently than ether,
> certainly it is the former that is being referred to in the
> networking technology.
>
> I have occasionally seen the phrase "luminiferous ether" in print so
> perhaps the spelling distinction is less clear-cut than you assume.

I've always enjoyed maintaining the latinate AE and OE diphthongs --
faeces (sing. faex in case you didn't know :-), aether, oesophagus,
oecumenical, oedema, encyclopaedia. I took a course in printing with
hand set type in 1956 where the fonts (wooden cases of movable type,
not numerical tables repsenting glyphs) included the ae, oe, Ae and Oe
ligatures.

The emerging flaw in this minor affectation is that now UTF-8 fanatics
are using the UTF-8 digitaal values for the corresponding
printable/renderable ligatures, joining them to the equally annoying
use of UTF-8 values for left & right, single & double quotation marks,
elipses, em dash and the fi, ffi, fl & ffl ligatures inter alia while
I pigheadedly cling for all that I do to unadorned ASCII.

But I tend to write "ethernet" on the hypothesis that it has become an
explicitly defined technical term, independent of it's etymological
origins in 19th c. English and, ultimately, Latin.

>
>> Because ether is a chemical, like starting fluid. Where as aether
>
> A family of chemicals if you're being precise about it, two alkane
> groups connected by an oxygen atom IIRC

Just so.

>> describes a place in the air, or has a connotation as to the air, or
>
> It was the medium in which light was believed to vibrate.

Yes. And they could never find it/any. And we're still struggling with
"the nature of the continuum".


FWIW,
--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Tue, 2020-01-28, Mike Spencer wrote:
...

> I've always enjoyed maintaining the latinate AE and OE diphthongs --
> faeces (sing. faex in case you didn't know :-), aether, oesophagus,
> oecumenical, oedema, encyclopaedia. I took a course in printing with
> hand set type in 1956 where the fonts (wooden cases of movable type,
> not numerical tables repsenting glyphs) included the ae, oe, Ae and Oe
> ligatures.
>
> The emerging flaw in this minor affectation is that now UTF-8 fanatics

s/UTF-8/Unicode/. Although UTF-8 is what opened the floodgates for a
lot of uses.

> are using the UTF-8 digitaal values for the corresponding
> printable/renderable ligatures, joining them to the equally annoying
> use of UTF-8 values for left & right, single & double quotation marks,
> elipses, em dash and the fi, ffi, fl & ffl ligatures inter alia while
> I pigheadedly cling for all that I do to unadorned ASCII.

Good. One way to explain it is, if you're in a medium (maedium?) where
you can't even use /italics/ to express emphasis, you probably should
treat that medium as no better than a typewriter, and avoid fancy
glyphs.

The f-ligatures are a weird case. I can see why they are glyphs in
fonts (it takes talent to render them right) but not why they are
Unicode code points. Not when italics and smallcaps are absent.

Last year, I found a stray 'fi' ligature in the national list of
canonical fungus names (coral fungi -> fingersvampar). Should it
have been there? Is a version of a name without ligatures more
canonical than one with ligatures?

The people keeping the list declared it must have been a cut-and-
paste mistake, and corrected it. But as far as I can tell, they
could just as well declared it was correct, and people parsing the
list would have to add a ligature splitting step.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

[Peter Flass]

How does quantum entanglement propagate?

--
Pete

[Peter Flass]

Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> wrote:
> On Tue, 2020-01-28, Mike Spencer wrote:
> ...
>> I've always enjoyed maintaining the latinate AE and OE diphthongs --
>> faeces (sing. faex in case you didn't know :-), aether, oesophagus,
>> oecumenical, oedema, encyclopaedia. I took a course in printing with
>> hand set type in 1956 where the fonts (wooden cases of movable type,
>> not numerical tables repsenting glyphs) included the ae, oe, Ae and Oe
>> ligatures.
>>
>> The emerging flaw in this minor affectation is that now UTF-8 fanatics
>
> s/UTF-8/Unicode/. Although UTF-8 is what opened the floodgates for a
> lot of uses.
>
>> are using the UTF-8 digitaal values for the corresponding
>> printable/renderable ligatures, joining them to the equally annoying
>> use of UTF-8 values for left & right, single & double quotation marks,
>> elipses, em dash and the fi, ffi, fl & ffl ligatures inter alia while
>> I pigheadedly cling for all that I do to unadorned ASCII.
>
> Good. One way to explain it is, if you're in a medium (maedium?) where
> you can't even use /italics/ to express emphasis, you probably should
> treat that medium as no better than a typewriter, and avoid fancy
> glyphs.
>
> The f-ligatures are a weird case. I can see why they are glyphs in
> fonts (it takes talent to render them right) but not why they are
> Unicode code points. Not when italics and smallcaps are absent.

As I understand it, the last two are forms of characters, just like the “a”
in various fonts is still a single character, whereas ligatures are
separate characters.

>
> Last year, I found a stray 'fi' ligature in the national list of
> canonical fungus names (coral fungi -> fingersvampar). Should it
> have been there? Is a version of a name without ligatures more
> canonical than one with ligatures?

Is “ä” more canonical than “ae”?

>
> The people keeping the list declared it must have been a cut-and-
> paste mistake, and corrected it. But as far as I can tell, they
> could just as well declared it was correct, and people parsing the
> list would have to add a ligature splitting step.
>
> /Jorgen
>



--

Pete

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2020-01-29, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is “ä” more canonical than “ae”?

Good question. But the use of "ae" in this case is simply a
workaround for character sets that don't have "ä". (Ditto for
corresponding usages of "oe" and "ue".) It has nothing to do
with ligatures.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2020-01-28, Mike Spencer <m...@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:

> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>
>> On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 04:12:18 -0800 (PST)
>> eezz...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> For my part it makes more sense to say aether net, like feather net.
>>
>> I never knew that aether was pronounced differently than ether,
>> certainly it is the former that is being referred to in the
>> networking technology.
>>
>> I have occasionally seen the phrase "luminiferous ether" in print so
>> perhaps the spelling distinction is less clear-cut than you assume.
>
> I've always enjoyed maintaining the latinate AE and OE diphthongs --
> faeces (sing. faex in case you didn't know :-), aether, oesophagus,
> oecumenical, oedema, encyclopaedia. I took a course in printing with
> hand set type in 1956 where the fonts (wooden cases of movable type,
> not numerical tables repsenting glyphs) included the ae, oe, Ae and Oe
> ligatures.

You do have a lot of fun hobbies. :-)

> The emerging flaw in this minor affectation is that now UTF-8 fanatics
> are using the UTF-8 digitaal values for the corresponding
> printable/renderable ligatures, joining them to the equally annoying
> use of UTF-8 values for left & right, single & double quotation marks,
> elipses, em dash and the fi, ffi, fl & ffl ligatures inter alia while
> I pigheadedly cling for all that I do to unadorned ASCII.

I'm with you. (I find the ellipses and dashes particularly irritating.)
And if, while passing through the Internet, such characters hit something
that can't handle UTF-8, a lot of garbage results.

> But I tend to write "ethernet" on the hypothesis that it has become an
> explicitly defined technical term, independent of it's etymological
> origins in 19th c. English and, ultimately, Latin.

According to the Wikipedia article, Ethernet was originally a Xerox
trademark. It was spelled with a plain E then, so the whole ligature
thing was a non-issue from day one.

>>> Because ether is a chemical, like starting fluid. Where as aether
>>
>> A family of chemicals if you're being precise about it, two alkane
>> groups connected by an oxygen atom IIRC
>
> Just so.
>
>>> describes a place in the air, or has a connotation as to the air, or
>>
>> It was the medium in which light was believed to vibrate.
>
> Yes. And they could never find it/any. And we're still struggling with
> "the nature of the continuum".

That reminds me of a fun science fiction story I once read (can't
remember the title or author, alas). Centuries ago, an alien spaceship
had crashed on Earth. Although defunct, enough of its drive was still
functioning to warp space in the vicinity of Earth, which caused the
effects which relativity explains. The rest of the universe was
Newtonian. A crew arrived to de-activate the remains of the crashed
ship. They discreetly avoided making contact with us in the process,
and quietly departed for home. As their ship accelerated smoothly
up through the speed of light, they got a good chuckle speculating on
the fuss that would ensue when we discovered that the Michelson-Morley
experiment no longer worked (uh, didn't work) as before.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> writes:
>
> Last year, I found a stray 'fi' ligature in the national list of
> canonical fungus names (coral fungi -> fingersvampar). Should it
> have been there? Is a version of a name without ligatures more
> canonical than one with ligatures?
>
> The people keeping the list declared it must have been a cut-and-
> paste mistake, and corrected it. But as far as I can tell, they
> could just as well declared it was correct, and people parsing the
> list would have to add a ligature splitting step.

That would be my assumption. Ligatures are simply making the text
prettier; they are not letters in the alphabet.

[Mike Spencer]

Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se> writes:

> On Tue, 2020-01-28, Mike Spencer wrote:
> ...
>> I've always enjoyed maintaining the latinate AE and OE diphthongs --
>> faeces (sing. faex in case you didn't know :-), aether, oesophagus,
>> oecumenical, oedema, encyclopaedia. I took a course in printing with
>> hand set type in 1956 where the fonts (wooden cases of movable type,
>> not numerical tables repsenting glyphs) included the ae, oe, Ae and Oe
>> ligatures.
>>
>> The emerging flaw in this minor affectation is that now UTF-8 fanatics
>
> s/UTF-8/Unicode/. Although UTF-8 is what opened the floodgates for a
> lot of uses.

Thank you. I knew I was guessing when I wrote UTF-8. Same as I was
guessing when I named a macro "un-ut" that undoes those annoying
items in base-64 encoded Unicode email from people who don't know
any better. :-)

> Good. One way to explain it is, if you're in a medium (maedium?) where
> you can't even use /italics/ to express emphasis, you probably should
> treat that medium as no better than a typewriter, and avoid fancy
> glyphs.

Yes, just what I do. But then I used a typewriter for 40 years before
I got a computer that would render non-ASCII glyphs.

> The f-ligatures are a weird case. I can see why they are glyphs in
> fonts (it takes talent to render them right) but not why they are
> Unicode code points. Not when italics and smallcaps are absent.
>
> Last year, I found a stray 'fi' ligature in the national list of
> canonical fungus names (coral fungi -> fingersvampar). Should it
> have been there? Is a version of a name without ligatures more
> canonical than one with ligatures?
>
> The people keeping the list declared it must have been a cut-and-
> paste mistake, and corrected it. But as far as I can tell, they
> could just as well declared it was correct, and people parsing the
> list would have to add a ligature splitting step.

Ha. Good story.

[Mike Spencer]

Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:

> Mike Spencer <m...@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>
>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>

>>> [Aether] was the medium in which light was believed to vibrate.

>>
>> Yes. And they could never find it/any. And we're still struggling
>> with "the nature of the continuum".
>>
>
> How does quantum entanglement propagate?

The score is Atoms: 3,126, Monads: 1

Leibniz' monads were supposed to be somehow "aware" of each other, all
of them in the universe, all the time. Quantum entanglement is the
only place I know of where Monads offer an handy explanation.

That one quantum just *knows* what the other is doing. ;-)

Is it coincidence that I'm (re)reading Stephenson's _Anathem_?

[Mike Spencer]

Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

> On 2020-01-28, Mike Spencer <m...@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>
>> I've always enjoyed maintaining the latinate AE and OE diphthongs --
>> faeces (sing. faex in case you didn't know :-), aether, oesophagus,
>> oecumenical, oedema, encyclopaedia. I took a course in printing with
>> hand set type in 1956 where the fonts (wooden cases of movable type,
>> not numerical tables repsenting glyphs) included the ae, oe, Ae and Oe
>> ligatures.
>
> You do have a lot of fun hobbies. :-)

That's one way to look at it. But when you have so many that you
don't have any time for a "job", is "hobbies" still the right word?
I seem to procrastinate with what *I* think of as hobbies,
e.g. restoring the Edwardian-era dental X-ray machine that I bought at
auction whein I was 14 and have been lugging around for 60 years.

Real soon now. The tube appears to be in perfect condition. Not sure
about the huge transformer. The high voltage wire is fabric/metal
braid. Probably should replace that. :-o

>> The emerging flaw in this minor affectation is that now UTF-8 fanatics
>> are using the UTF-8 digitaal values for the corresponding
>> printable/renderable ligatures, joining them to the equally annoying
>> use of UTF-8 values for left & right, single & double quotation marks,
>> elipses, em dash and the fi, ffi, fl & ffl ligatures inter alia while
>> I pigheadedly cling for all that I do to unadorned ASCII.
>
> I'm with you. (I find the ellipses and dashes particularly irritating.)
> And if, while passing through the Internet, such characters hit something
> that can't handle UTF-8, a lot of garbage results.

Yeah, base-64, one more thing for emacs to undo to make it readable.

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 21:58:54 GMT, Mike Spencer <m...@bogus.nodomain.nowhere>
wrote:

>
> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>

{Aether]

>> It was the medium in which light was believed to vibrate.
>
> Yes. And they could never find it/any. And we're still struggling with
> "the nature of the continuum".
>
>

Ask Eddie (now re-reading H2G2)


--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

[JimP]

On 29 Jan 2020 00:55:05 GMT, Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid>
wrote:

I read that one to. But I remember it as showing us that our ideas
about physics were wrong.

--
Jim

[jmreno]

On 1/29/2020 4:51 AM, JimP wrote:

{snip}>>>>

>>>> It was the medium in which light was believed to vibrate.
>>>
>>> Yes. And they could never find it/any. And we're still struggling with
>>> "the nature of the continuum".

Yes, they did find it.

It's called the Higgs Field.

The Higgs Field gives rise to the Strong Force, the Weak Force, the
Electromagnetic Force, and Gravity.

The theory of the Higgs Field is the Unified Field Theory.

It needs more work so we can use electromagnetism to operate through the
Higgs Field to control gravity.

[Peter Flass]

Sounds like a good story - anyone recall the name?

--
Pete

[Peter Flass]

That’s the distinction between a letter and a glyph.

--
Pete

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 07:35:29 -0700
Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Joe Pfeiffer <pfei...@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:

> > That would be my assumption. Ligatures are simply making the text
> > prettier; they are not letters in the alphabet.
> >
>
> That’s the distinction between a letter and a glyph.

Sometimes the glyph matters, not usually in latin alphabet
languages though.

String length in Unicode, especially UTF-8 and UTF-16, is a complex
thing where it pays to think about which of these you want:

a: Number of bytes storage needed
b: Number of letters
c: Number of glyphs

Truncate a string at the wrong point and you can break a letter or
an important multi-letter glyph.

Guess who got to ride herd on a large codebase keeping this stuff
right.

[Mike Duffy]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:00:19 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

> How does quantum entanglement propagate?

In a laser, a photon passes close to an excited electron, triggering the
release of a new photon that is entangled with the original.

So, if you put a mirror at one end of the lasing medium, and a
partly-transparent mirror on the opposite end, and with parallel mirrors,
it does not take long to fill up the lasing volume with entangled photons.

How much silvering is dictated by the power needed to excite the electrons,
waste heat dissipation, operating temperature, etc.


I read the wiki entry on 'monads'. The cladistic definitions of
sub-components are interesting, but it all seems too abitrary.

On the other hand, it does not take much hand-waving to say that the 'big
bang' started off as one big photon(*), thus quantum physics provides us
with the assertion that all sub-components (i.e. all particles in the
Universe) have their wave function synchronized at that frequency,
specifically the frequency with photon momentum equall to the rest mass of
the Universe.

(*) Two actually. There *is* the anti-matter mirror image Universe that's
travelling away from us at just a smidgeon less than the speed of light.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:

> In English.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet

The letters in that alphabet such as the "ae" (not going to figure out
how to actually type it) are not ligatures.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Exactly. Looking at https://typedecon.com/blogs/type-glossary/ligature/
we find the definition of a ligature: "Two or more letters are joined
together to form one glyph or character."

[Peter Flass]

Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 08:38:48 -0700, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:

>>
>> Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:
>>
>>>> That would be my assumption. Ligatures are simply making the text
>>>> prettier; they are not letters in the alphabet.
>>>
>>> In English.
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet
>>
>> The letters in that alphabet such as the "ae" (not going to figure out
>> how to actually type it) are not ligatures.
>

> If you have a num-block, a GrAlt 132 should produce an "ä". Not that many
> people outside Germany would need that.

iPad is easy too, press and hold “a” and it pops up a list of accented
”a”s, plus “æ” to choose from.

--
Pete

[Dan Espen]

Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:

> On 2020-01-29, Mike Duffy <Bo...@NoSuchEmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 28 Jan 2020 17:00:19 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>>
>>> How does quantum entanglement propagate?
>

> No-one knows.

That is correct but I suspect it has something to do with additional
dimensions that are not constrained to 3D space.

--
Dan Espen

[Mike Spencer]

jmreno <no...@znet.com> writes:

> [ I wrote at some point...]
>
>> Yes. And they could never find it/any [Aether]. And we're still

>> struggling with "the nature of the continuum".
>
> Yes, they did find it.
>
> It's called the Higgs Field.

Douglas Hofstadter started out in particle physics but somewhere along
the way -- grad school? -- decided that the subject was just too hard
for him. He's way smarter than I am so I have never felt bad about
not keeping up with it all.

I've even incorporated into a forged ironwork gate an allusion to
whether the distribution of nutrinos in the iniverse is smooth or
lumpy, reportedly a question of burning importance to the crew that
Hofstadter abandoned. I find it entertaining but have no grasp of why
it might matter nor of any instance where it can be seen to matter.

> The Higgs Field gives rise to the Strong Force, the Weak Force, the
> Electromagnetic Force, and Gravity.
>
> The theory of the Higgs Field is the Unified Field Theory.

So I've heard. :-)

> It needs more work so we can use electromagnetism to operate through the
> Higgs Field to control gravity.

Yes. Forget the flying car. Where's my antigrav belt?

[JimP]

On 29 Jan 2020 18:28:07 -0400, Mike Spencer

What do you think of the claims, I don't remember details but this is
what they said, that if we could control gravity we could get to other
planets in our solar system faster than liquid engine propellants.

I feel concern that some moron would use it to drop large objects on
people they didn't like.

--
Jim

[J. Clarke]

On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:46:30 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach

<a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

>On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 08:38:48 -0700, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>>
>> Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:
>>

>>>> That would be my assumption. Ligatures are simply making the text
>>>> prettier; they are not letters in the alphabet.
>>>
>>> In English.
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet
>>
>> The letters in that alphabet such as the "ae" (not going to figure out
>> how to actually type it) are not ligatures.
>

>If you have a num-block, a GrAlt 132 should produce an "ä". Not that many
>people outside Germany would need that.

On Windows just install the German language pack, pick German as the
language, and hit the " key.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 16:55:18 -0600
JimP <solo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> What do you think of the claims, I don't remember details but this is
> what they said, that if we could control gravity we could get to other
> planets in our solar system faster than liquid engine propellants.

A strong maybe. We have a theory that says EM and gravity are
coupled as aspects of the Higgs field (or thereabouts) but AIUI we can't
yet calculate any details of how to take advantage of that. The coupling
may be too weak to be useful (modifying local gravity by one G might take
fields that rip nuclei apart, or we might be able to do it with AAA
batteries). I rather suspect a very weak coupling because otherwise we'd
have seen it.

[Mike Spencer]

Well, I don't know about faster. But AFAIK the big hit in resources
of all kinds -- energy, pollution, hardware, physiological stress --
is getting out of the gravity well. (G m m')/r^^2 == 0 for the first
100 or so miles would be spectacular. After that, in orbit or
transit, you might even *want* gravity, might find it useful.

> I feel concern that some moron would use it to drop large objects on
> people they didn't like.

Or, depending on how the effect is generated, make such people just,
yew know, blow away in the wind. Imagine it as, say, a ray gun (not a
Reagan): Go to the next political rally, point it at the bloviating
speaker and watch him drift gently away while his security detail
tries futilely to jump up and grab him down.

[Andy Leighton]

On 29 Jan 2020 19:29:28 GMT, Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:

> On 2020-01-29, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 08:38:48 -0700, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>>>
>>> Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:
>>>

>>>>> That would be my assumption. Ligatures are simply making the text
>>>>> prettier; they are not letters in the alphabet.
>>>>
>>>> In English.
>>>>
>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_and_Norwegian_alphabet
>>>
>>> The letters in that alphabet such as the "ae" (not going to figure out
>>> how to actually type it) are not ligatures.
>

> The contradictory definition you posted immediately afterwards
> notwithstanding.

>
>> If you have a num-block, a GrAlt 132 should produce an "ä". Not that many
>> people outside Germany would need that.
>

> Motörhead fans? (Well, for the o-umlaut, anyway. Can't off-hand
> think of any uses of a-umlaut in English.)

Well if you are going down the line of metal/music umlauts then Frank Zappa
had an album called Läther but that is the only one I can think of. Of
course English speakers might also want to talk about German bands
such as Die Ärzte (although that is a proper German word).

--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
- Douglas Adams

[Andreas Eder]

On Thu 30 Jan 2020 at 11:11, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

> Doesn't that also switch the keyboard layout? For instance the y and z
> are swapped on a German keyboard to an English keyboard, other keys too.
>
> The German keyboard is often called QWERTZ instead of QWERTY.

On a properly configured Unix/Linux computer you can generate such
characters with the help of the compose key without switching the
keyboard.

'Andreas

[Peter Flass]

Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

> Doesn't that also switch the keyboard layout? For instance the y and z
> are swapped on a German keyboard to an English keyboard, other keys too.
>
> The German keyboard is often called QWERTZ instead of QWERTY.

Once again iPad, I can install as many different virtual keyboards as I
want and toggle between them.

--
Pete

[Charlie Gibbs]

I keep a file of UTF-8 extended characters and copy and paste as required.
I don't need it that often so it's not much of a hardship, and it's
guaranteed to work anywhere.

[Charlie Gibbs]

Speaking of "metal umlauts" (see the Wikipedia article), I once read
of a couple of parody bands. One called themselves "Ümlaut", while
the other called themselves "Umläut". (Totally different pronunciations,
of course.)

[Mike Spencer]

Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:

> I keep a file of UTF-8 extended characters and copy and paste as required.

> I don't need it that often so it's not much of a hardship...

Exactly what I do. Less trouble than trying to remember rarely used
keystrokes.

> ...and it's guaranteed to work anywhere.

Um, well, if you visit the de.* newsgroups, it apperas that there are
at least two encodings used. My system groks, e.g ö and Ä but not
whatever the other one (possibly using 3 bytes/char?) is.

[Andy Burns]

Mike Spencer wrote:

> My system groks, e.g � and �

Ish.

Within thunderbird, those both show as black diamonds with white
question marks � due to lack of character set encoding cues from Gnus.

If I view the source of your message they do show as lowercase o umlaut
and uppercase A umlaut, if I paste them into a hex editor the sequences
are 0xC3 0xB6 and 0xC3 0x84 which would be correct for UTF-8.

Without character encoding headers, you might be better of taking your
chances on ISO Latin-1 eight bit characters 0xF6 and 0xC4

[Bob Martin]

On 30 Jan 2020 at 18:59:40, Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2020-01-30, Andreas Eder <a_ede...@web.de> wrote:
>
>> On Thu 30 Jan 2020 at 11:11, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 18:19:31 -0500, J. Clarke wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:46:30 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach
>>>> <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If you have a num-block, a GrAlt 132 should produce an "ä". Not that many
>>>>> people outside Germany would need that.
>>>>
>>>> On Windows just install the German language pack, pick German as the
>>>> language, and hit the " key.
>>>
>>> Doesn't that also switch the keyboard layout? For instance the y and z
>>> are swapped on a German keyboard to an English keyboard, other keys too.
>>>
>>> The German keyboard is often called QWERTZ instead of QWERTY.
>>
>> On a properly configured Unix/Linux computer you can generate such
>> characters with the help of the compose key without switching the
>> keyboard.
>
> I keep a file of UTF-8 extended characters and copy and paste as required.
> I don't need it that often so it's not much of a hardship, and it's
> guaranteed to work anywhere.

On Ubuntu and Mint one can add "Character Palette" to the panel.

[Joe Pfeiffer]

I find it more interesting with every response how an offhand comment in
a post distinguishing letters from ligatures has become a discussion on
how to produce those characters.

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Wed, 2020-01-29, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2020-01-29, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Is “ä” more canonical than “ae”?
>
> Good question. But the use of "ae" in this case is simply a
> workaround for character sets that don't have "ä". (Ditto for
> corresponding usages of "oe" and "ue".) It has nothing to do
> with ligatures.

Depends on where you are. In Sweden they are distinct, and you can't
replace ä with ae, or the other way around.

In scientific names, where you get ae and so on from Latin, ISTR they
are moving away from using the ligatures. So the ae ligature would be
canonicalized to ae in that context, I suppose. Linnaeus.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

[JimP]

On 30 Jan 2020 21:49:44 -0400, Mike Spencer

I see the o and the A with the double dot over them, but I have
installed some mapping fonts that might contain those letters.

--
Jim

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2020-01-31, Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:

> On 2020-01-30, Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I keep a file of UTF-8 extended characters and copy and paste as required.
>> I don't need it that often so it's not much of a hardship, and it's
>> guaranteed to work anywhere.
>

> YMYA

???

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2020-01-31, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

> On 31 Jan 2020 09:12:07 GMT, Huge wrote:
>
>> On 2020-01-30, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:

>>
>>> On 29 Jan 2020 19:29:28 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>>
>>>> Motörhead fans? (Well, for the o-umlaut, anyway. Can't off-hand
>>>> think of any uses of a-umlaut in English.)
>>>

>>> Doppelgänger,
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>>> which is a loanword from the German language.
>>
>> Indeed, but then "The problem with defending the purity of the English
>> language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We
>> don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
>> languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their
>> pockets for new vocabulary."
>>
>> -- James Nicoll

I've always loved that quote. :-)

> Kindergarten! ;-)

Good one.

> There are a lot a lot French words used in English. Suppose that is
> because France and the UK occupied each other often in the last
> centuries.

The thing that's wrong with the French is that
they don't have a word for entrepreneur.
-- George W. Bush

[John Levine]

In article <87d0azi...@usenet.ankman.de>,
Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> Now it will be interesting what header Gnus will declare in the header...
>
>UTF-8 it is. I would have expected iso8859-1 though, as the characters
>should be covered by it.

ISO8859-x is rapidly dying out in favor of UTF-8 which has the
advantage that there is only one UTF-8, rather than umpteen language
specific code pages.

--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[Andy Burns]

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Huge wrote:
>
>> YMYA
>
> ???

You're me, you are.

[Peter Flass]

Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On 31 Jan 2020 09:12:07 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>
>> On 2020-01-30, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>> On 29 Jan 2020 19:29:28 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>
>>>> Motörhead fans? (Well, for the o-umlaut, anyway. Can't off-hand
>>>> think of any uses of a-umlaut in English.)
>>>
>>> Doppelgänger,
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>>> which is a loanword from the German language.
>>
>> Indeed, but then "The problem with defending the purity of the English
>> language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We
>> don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other
>> languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their
>> pockets for new vocabulary."
>>
>> -- James Nicoll
>

> Kindergarten! ;-)

>
> There are a lot a lot French words used in English. Suppose that is
> because France and the UK occupied each other often in the last
> centuries.
>

> But I suppose the German language became much impure adding more English
> words to it over the last decades than English added German words, due to
> IT and international business. Suppose Germans don't care much about to
> keep their language pure. At least I don't.

Like English, German is a living language that continues to grow and
change, unlike some other ossified languages that academics try to squeeze
into a straightjacket.

--
Pete

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2020-01-31, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>> But I suppose the German language became much impure adding more English
>> words to it over the last decades than English added German words, due to
>> IT and international business. Suppose Germans don't care much about to
>> keep their language pure. At least I don't.
>
> Like English, German is a living language that continues to grow and
> change, unlike some other ossified languages that academics try to squeeze
> into a straightjacket.

Your right, off course.

But we must be careful to distinguish between evolution and decay.

[Charlie Gibbs]

Thank you, me.

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Fri, 31 Jan 2020 17:50:10 GMT, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net>
wrote:

> On 31 Jan 2020 16:00:40 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>
>> Obafc: I still remember how impressed I was on sitting down in front
>> of a Xerox Star for the first time that it could display, edit and
>> print accented and ligatured characters.
>
> A friend in Germany had an MPS-801 printer for his Commodore 64 which
> could not produce (or we didn't know how) other than 7-bit ASCII, so no
> Umlauts. Another guy had an Epson RX 80 (I believe) later on a German
> Amiga. Default it also couldn't print Umlauts, although the Amiga
> displayed them. But there was an ESC code you could switch to other
> languages. There I was impressed.

We 'ad to user-define our own characters; try telling that to the kids
todae, and they won't believe you! </Jeddadiah[?]>

--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 2020-02-01, Kerr-Mudd,John <nots...@invalid.org> wrote:
o

Still, it's nice to no longer have to pencil in accents, etc.

[Andy Leighton]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2020 11:07:10 -0500, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On 29 Jan 2020 19:29:28 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>

>> On 2020-01-29, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>
>>> If you have a num-block, a GrAlt 132 should produce an "ä". Not that many
>>> people outside Germany would need that.
>>

>> Motörhead fans? (Well, for the o-umlaut, anyway. Can't off-hand
>> think of any uses of a-umlaut in English.)
>

> Doppelgänger, which is a loanword from the German language.

Although the dictionaries still use an a-umlaut, most common use in
newspapers and on the BBC website just use a plain a.

[Peter Flass]

Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2020-02-01, Kerr-Mudd,John <nots...@invalid.org> wrote:
> o
>> On Fri, 31 Jan 2020 17:50:10 GMT, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 31 Jan 2020 16:00:40 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>>
>>>> Obafc: I still remember how impressed I was on sitting down in front
>>>> of a Xerox Star for the first time that it could display, edit and
>>>> print accented and ligatured characters.
>>>
>>> A friend in Germany had an MPS-801 printer for his Commodore 64 which
>>> could not produce (or we didn't know how) other than 7-bit ASCII, so no
>>> Umlauts. Another guy had an Epson RX 80 (I believe) later on a German
>>> Amiga. Default it also couldn't print Umlauts, although the Amiga
>>> displayed them. But there was an ESC code you could switch to other
>>> languages. There I was impressed.
>>
>> We 'ad to user-define our own characters; try telling that to the kids
>> todae, and they won't believe you! </Jeddadiah[?]>
>
> Still, it's nice to no longer have to pencil in accents, etc.
>

When PPOE first got a 3800 many years ago we had a guy design a custom font
for us to use.

--
Pete

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Sat, 1 Feb 2020 09:20:32 -0000 (UTC)
"Kerr-Mudd,John" <nots...@invalid.org> wrote:

> We 'ad to user-define our own characters; try telling that to the kids
> todae, and they won't believe you! </Jeddadiah[?]>

When I worked at the Inland Revenue there was a custom font that
included the Revenue logo as (IIRC) four letters each with a quarter of the
logo.