UK pound sign

[DrTeeth]

When I put a UK pound sign in a news message, it appears as "?". How
can I get it to appear as it should?
Thanks
--
Cheers,

DrT

** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
** out of someone who richly deserves it.

[lucreti...@fl.it]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 12:38:59 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com>
wrote:

>When I put a UK pound sign in a news message, it appears as "?". How
>can I get it to appear as it should?
>Thanks

I use alt/156 to give me £ -shows in my groups fine.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 12:38:59 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com> wrote:

>When I put a UK pound sign in a news message, it appears as "?". How
>can I get it to appear as it should?
>Thanks

Ah, code pages. They're the worst.

The £ symbol isn't in ASCII due to the American nature of it. So you
need to be sending your messages in a different language.

I've got mine set (tools/settings/language) to English (International),
which should set the Content-Type: headers correctly to a code page with
the £ symbol in.

There's a further issue, in that other people's newsreaders may or may
not do the right thing with that header, and their computer may or may
not even have an appopriate font with the £ symbol in it.

So it's pretty pot luck whether you get anywhere, and not worth worrying
much about frankly.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
Now I lay me down to sleep
Try to count electric sheep
Sweet dream wishes you can keep
How I hate the night. - Marvin the paranoid android

[DrTeeth]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 10:27:04 -0300, just as I was about to take a
herb, lucreti...@fl.it disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>I use alt/156 to give me £ -shows in my groups fine.

I do not think that using that alt combo is any different to typing
the pound sign on the keyboard.

This pound sign is from my keyboard £
This pound sign is from alt/156 £

Please let me know what you see, and please reply quoting my message.
I would be interested to hear what you see and what I do when you send
the message back in a quote.
--
Cheers,

DrT

"If you want to find out what is wrong
with democracy, spend five minutes with
the average voter". - Winston Churchill

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:10:19 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 10:27:04 -0300, just as I was about to take a
>herb, lucreti...@fl.it disturbed my reverie and wrote:
>
>>I use alt/156 to give me £ -shows in my groups fine.
>
>I do not think that using that alt combo is any different to typing
>the pound sign on the keyboard.
>
>This pound sign is from my keyboard £
>This pound sign is from alt/156 £
>
>Please let me know what you see, and please reply quoting my message.
>I would be interested to hear what you see and what I do when you send
>the message back in a quote.

Works fine - your headers are correct for a code page with £ in:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

As I said nearby, you can't trust other newsreaders to do the right
thing.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
I was most impressed when I looked up into the London sky and saw
a star through all the light pollution. A few of us checked some
astronomy references to try and identify it, and we're reasonably
confident that it was Sol. -- Peter Corlett, asr

[lucreti...@fl.it]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:10:19 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com>
wrote:

>On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 10:27:04 -0300, just as I was about to take a
>herb, lucreti...@fl.it disturbed my reverie and wrote:
>
>>I use alt/156 to give me £ -shows in my groups fine.
>
>I do not think that using that alt combo is any different to typing
>the pound sign on the keyboard.
>
>This pound sign is from my keyboard £
>This pound sign is from alt/156 £
>
>Please let me know what you see, and please reply quoting my message.
>I would be interested to hear what you see and what I do when you send
>the message back in a quote.

I didn't mean to type the alt/156 but to depress them, alt key codes?
You can see what you got, looks fine both ways I would say.

[Ralph Fox]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 12:38:59 +0100, DrTeeth wrote:

> When I put a UK pound sign in a news message, it appears as "?".

To whom does it appear as "?"? To you using Agent, or to someone else?

> How can I get it to appear as it should?

If it appears to YOU as "?", then it is probably a language or font setting.

1. Go to "Tools >> Options >> Languages";

Do you have more than one language listed?

2. For 'English' or, each for version of English in the languages list:

2.1 Select the language;
2.2 While the language is selected, make sure that "Code page"
is set to "Western Europe (Codepage 1252)".

3. Go to "Tools >> Options >> Display >> Fonts";

4. For each version of English in the drop-down list labelled
"Fonts for the language":

4.1 Select the language in the drop-down;
2.2 While the language is selected, click on both
"Variable-pitch body" and "Fixed-pitch body"
and make sure that "Script" is set to Western.

If you are not using standard Windows fonts, it is possible
that the font itself does not contain the UK POUND sign "£".
Check it in the Windows Character Map program.


--
Kind regards
Ralph

[Lee Gordon]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:10:19 +0100, DrTeeth
<no-e...@tardis.com> wrote:

>This pound sign is from my keyboard £
>This pound sign is from alt/156 £
>
>Please let me know what you see, and please reply quoting my message.

From here in America, I'm seeing the correct pound symbol.

[Kees Nuyt]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 12:38:59 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com> wrote:

> When I put a UK pound sign in a news message, it appears as "?". How
> can I get it to appear as it should?
> Thanks

On simple text platforms, I would circumvent the whole issue by using
the international 3-letter abbreviations for valuta (ISO 4217), in this
case GBP, EUR for Euro, USD for USdollars, etc.

https://www.iban.com/currency-codes.html

--
Regards,
Kees Nuyt

[DrTeeth]

On Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:54:27 +0200, just as I was about to take a
herb, Kees Nuyt <k.n...@nospam.demon.nl> disturbed my reverie and
wrote:

Thank you all for your contributions. It looks as if, in this case,
the problem is not with my set up.

[Steve Hayes]

On Mon, 06 Aug 2018 12:38:59 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com>
wrote:

>When I put a UK pound sign in a news message, it appears as "?". How
>can I get it to appear as it should?
>Thanks

£

Could you see that one?

I can, and I typed Alt-156.


--
Ignore the following - it's spammers for spambot fodder.

lucymart...@gmail.com
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casual...@gmail.com

[The Horny Goat]

Ditto from Canada. One presumes the original poster either had a UK
keyboard or knows how to do the alt-seqence.

[Lee Gordon]

On Wed, 08 Aug 2018 07:46:43 +0200, Steve Hayes
<haye...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

>Ł

>
>Could you see that one?

Yes.

[DrTeeth]

On Wed, 08 Aug 2018 07:46:43 +0200, just as I was about to take a
herb, Steve Hayes <haye...@telkomsa.net> disturbed my reverie and
wrote:

>I can, and I typed Alt-156.

Aren't both the pound sign and the ALT combo exactly the same as far
as the computer and software are concerned?

[Arjan de Groot]

En articulo <jb0pmd9ab887e0l3g...@4ax.com>, DrTeeth
<no-e...@tardis.com> escribio:

>Aren't both the pound sign and the ALT combo exactly the same as far
>as the computer and software are concerned?

Yes.

If you can't see the £ you probably have your Agent configured to view
and send messages in 7-bit ASCII only. ASCII (or us-ascii) has only
room for 128 different characters (letters, numbers, common
punctuation marks and some "special" ones.

If you want to use (up to 256) characters like ü, á, ñ, ê, € and £
you'll have to configure Agent to use special codepages. See menu:
Tools -> Options -> Languages.

Set Codepage to: Western Europe (Codepage 1252)
Send Usenet As: Western Windows-compatible (us-ascii, ISO-8859-1)
Send Email As: Western Windows-compatible (us-ascii, ISO-8859-1)
Default Charset: Latin9 Western with euro (ISO-8859-15)
Usenet Text: 7bit/8bit

That should do it.

You could of course also go all modern and use Unicode (UTF) if you
want (and understand how it works).

Arjan

[Arthur Conan Doyle]

DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com> wrote:

>Aren't both the pound sign and the ALT combo exactly the same as far
>as the computer and software are concerned?

Yep. Just another way to enter ascii codes in Windows. British keyboard keys are
just programmed to reflect the predominate ascii codes. ©

http://www.irongeek.com/alt-numpad-ascii-key-combos-and-chart.html

Note that you need to use the codes in the Windows column, not the IBM column.
ANd, as was mentioned earlier, machines with non-Latin code pages loaded won't
see these as intended.

[The Horny Goat]

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 13:24:37 +0200, Arjan de Groot <li...@gmx.net>
wrote:

I'm pretty sure I installed Agent 8 straight out of the box and I see
the pound symbol just fine. I'm in Canada but use the US keyboard as
the so called 'Canadian' keyboard inserts French accents in the
darnedst places. I know HOW to switch it but any time I need a French
accent I can copy and paste it.

[DrTeeth]

On Thu, 16 Aug 2018 16:54:53 -0700, just as I was about to take a
herb, The Horny Goat <lcr...@home.ca> disturbed my reverie and wrote:

> I know HOW to switch it but any time I need a French
>accent I can copy and paste it.

For not-often-used characters and fractions, I use the ALT-number pad.
So for ½, I hold down the ALT key, type 0189 on the number pad, and
when I release the ALT key, the ½ appears. This does not work with the
numbers on top of the letters.

[Ken Blake]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 14:20:49 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 16 Aug 2018 16:54:53 -0700, just as I was about to take a
>herb, The Horny Goat <lcr...@home.ca> disturbed my reverie and wrote:
>
>> I know HOW to switch it but any time I need a French
>>accent I can copy and paste it.
>
>For not-often-used characters and fractions, I use the ALT-number pad.
>So for ½, I hold down the ALT key, type 0189 on the number pad, and
>when I release the ALT key, the ½ appears. This does not work with the
>numbers on top of the letters.

That's fine if you can remember the 4-digit sequences. I can't, and as
far as I'm concerned it's too much trouble to look them up each time I
want one.

There are several better ways to do this, such as the free Wincompose
at
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/wincompose-insert-special-characters-symbols

[som...@a.computer.com]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:57:58 -0700, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com>
wrote:

>There are several better ways to do this, such as the free Wincompose
>at
>https://www.thewindowsclub.com/wincompose-insert-special-characters-symbols

If you're using windows, you already have such a utility, built in.
It's called charmap or character map, and it allows you to choose a
font and see all the extented characters built into it. For some
unicode fonts there could be thousands!

Sadly Microsoft now treat it as an app meaning it doesn't appear on
the alphabetical list of installed programs but you can search for it.
Type charmap

[Ken Blake]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2018 12:22:00 +0100, som...@a.computer.com wrote:

>On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:57:58 -0700, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com>
>wrote:
>
>>There are several better ways to do this, such as the free Wincompose
>>at
>>https://www.thewindowsclub.com/wincompose-insert-special-characters-symbols
>
>If you're using windows, you already have such a utility, built in.
>It's called charmap or character map, and it allows you to choose a
>font and see all the extented characters built into it. For some
>unicode fonts there could be thousands!

No, it is not such a utility. It's very different. Yes, it gives you
the ability to find and enter all those characters, but it does *not*
give you the ability to enter them directly by typing a mnemonic
couple of characters.

Using a utility like Wincompose is much easier and much faster than
looking something up in charmap. And you don't have to make any effort
to remember what to type. As a single example, if I want the character
ñ, I simply press the right alt key, then n, then ~

[DrTeeth]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:57:58 -0700, just as I was about to take a
herb, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com> disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>That's fine if you can remember the 4-digit sequences. I can't, and as
>far as I'm concerned it's too much trouble to look them up each time I
>want one.
>
>There are several better ways to do this, such as the free Wincompose
>at
>https://www.thewindowsclub.com/wincompose-insert-special-characters-symbols

That looks like a very handy app. Thanks for the link!

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 20 Aug 2018 10:52:34 +0100, DrTeeth <no-e...@tardis.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, 17 Aug 2018 07:57:58 -0700, just as I was about to take a
>herb, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com> disturbed my reverie and wrote:
>
>>That's fine if you can remember the 4-digit sequences. I can't, and as
>>far as I'm concerned it's too much trouble to look them up each time I
>>want one.
>>
>>There are several better ways to do this, such as the free Wincompose
>>at
>>https://www.thewindowsclub.com/wincompose-insert-special-characters-symbols
>
>That looks like a very handy app. Thanks for the link!

You're welcome. I like it a lot.