Thanks, Gilles. Our messages crossed.

Ian



On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 3:12 AM, Gilles Kirouac<[email protected]> wrote:
> Ian
>
>  The needed ASCII expresssion is:
>
>  suits =: 4 u: 9827 9830 9829 9824
>
>  I wrote that expresssion in Endnote[7] with a reference to
> Playing Cards in Wikipedia.
>
>  (#,$) suits  NB. not 12!
> 4 4
>
>  To insert playing cards symbols under Windows, one can use
> the MS supplied Character Table ("Table des caractères"
> on my French-Can system). There are javascript browsers for use
> with any Internet browser supporting Unicode such as
> http://www.soldin.de/about/2003-js_unibook/
> The problem is to find the category; with that particular one,
> the Playing cards are in Miscellaneous Symbols.
>
>  ~ Gilles
>
> ---------- Original Message -----------
> From: Ian Clark <[email protected]>
> To: Programming forum <[email protected]>
> Sent: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 02:07:48 +0100
> Subject: [Jprogramming] How do I enter a Unicode char in the J session?
>
>> Edn 2 (draft) of APWJ by Eugene McDonnell (p280) invites readers to
>> enter the expression:
>>
>> suits=:  7&u: '♣♦♥♠'
>>
>> For readers of the ebook version, this expression copy/pastes nicely
>> into the J session and behaves as expected.
>>
>> But novice readers of the paperback version may wonder how they can
>> be expected to type ♣♦♥♠ without having keytops labelled ♣,
>>  ♦, ♥ and ♠. Short of directing readers to
>> http://unicode.org/charts/ and inviting them to hunt/copy/paste ♣
>> etc (and I wouldn't know where to start looking... what alphabet is
>> it, please?), I don't know how to answer this
>> (a) succintly in the present example, eg to assign (suits=:...)
>>  using only ascii,
>> (b) in general.
>>
>> Suggestions please?
>>
>> Another thing. The novice may well ask, why not: (suits=:
>> '♣♦♥♠')?
>>
>> A footnote with a brief but clear explanation of why
>> ($'♣♦♥♠') is not 4 but 12 would be helpful. (I don't
>> consider the one-word answer utf8 to be an "explanation".)
>>
>> And has anyone written a unicode browser in J (the simpler the
>> better) to insert a chosen char into the J window which works a bit
>> like Menu
>> > Insert > Symbol... in MSWord? If we have a Wiki page for it, it
>> would be a courtesy to have a footnote directing readers there.
>>
>> Ian Clark
>> for Vector Books.
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> ------- End of Original Message -------
>
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