Hi Graeme,
> I do not understand why the fstab line in Tim's "NAS not Auto
> Mounting" post contains several triple "?". I've noticed in other
> messages that the query symbol often appears in a non-interrogative
> context. The messages are apparently coded UTF-8. What's going on
> please?
It seems some of the email programs used by writers to the list think
it's helpful to turn multiple spaces into a non-braeking space.
I notice this because it interferes with vim's re-formatting of the text
when I trim down the quoting in my reply.
It's a daft idea. I think Outlook does it too.
Here's a sentence ending in two spaces. And a second sentence after
which I'll put two non-breaking spaces. Perhaps that shows a difference
when you view it.
The normal space is U+0020 in Unicode, the non-breaking one is U+00A0.
In UTF-8, the normal space is just the single byte 0x20, but U+00A0
needs two bytes: 0xc2 0xa0.
$ printf ':\u00A0:' | hd
00000000 3a c2 a0 3a |:..:|
00000004
$
An email program running in a UTF-8 locale should display both kinds as
space on the screen. That you see triple ‘?’ suggests something,
somewhere your end isn't keen to show UTF-8. Try this printf(1) to see
if you get the same result.
$ printf '\u00a342\n'
£42
$
--
Cheers, Ralph.
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