Re: The "cent key"
On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:09:37 -0400 Ted Roche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Travis Roy wrote: > > > > > On my mac I can hold option $ > > > > Just my 2¢ > > ___ > > On my ThinkPad under FC6, I can just type ¢ By selecting Menu, Character > Map, View, by Unicode Block, Latin-1, finding the character, clicking > Copy, clicking back into the message, selecting Paste. > > How hard could it be? > > I'll bet there's an easier way... time to read the rtfm For one, there's xmodmap. My keyboards are set up so that the otherwise useless (or worse) key to the left of "A" is what I call a "Tux" key. For example: "Tux" 4 £ Shift "Tux" 4 ¢ "Tux" e é (And good riddance to Caps Lock.) -Bill __ P.S. "rtfm?" Oh, yes INDEED. What a *monster* the X-keymapping Tower of Babel is... P.P.S. Hmm. A possible topic for a presentation some month...? ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: The "cent key"
On 7/8/07, Jason Stephenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Now you have my $.02. (Why isn't there a cent key on the IMB keyboard??) The spot where most typewriters (even those from IBM) have the cent key is taken up by ^ on most computer keyboards. Interestingly, the cent character is not a part of the basic ASCII character set. A bit surprising, really, when you consider that until email came along the @ was relegated to mostly archaic uses as a short hand for "each." Just my 2d. I don't remember if the Apple ][ had @. It had " above the 2 key. Now if we can get the location of the ~ and ESC keys standardized. Yes, I work on a variety of keyboards :-( Esp. laptops. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: The "cent key"
Thanks Rick, It's been a few years since I worked with Baudot code (1971), but the ASR 33 was used at Burger King Corp in the early to mid 1970s with their point of sale test in the office. The BK POS device was a 4K core memory PDP-8M with no storage device, no punched paper tape. The printer code actually had to issue the code to strike the hammers on the drum. No UART, so the bits had to be timed by code loops. The advantage of this, is that it was possible to adjust the baudrate on the fly. The BK system had a powerfail board that would save all the registers (1 12 bit accumulator, 1 link bit, possibly the MQ, and the Program Counter). On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 23:01:15 -0400 (EDT) Ric Werme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jerry Feldman wrote: > On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 11:36:02 -0400 > > > The ASCII character set was originally a 7 bit character set defined in > > the late 1950s when the input device was an ASR 33 teletype. ASCII > > started to replace the old baudot code which was (if I remember a 4 bit > > code). > > Five bit code, see > http://www.baudot.net/ > http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/papertape.html > > OBtW: I worked as a contractor at a place from time to time and one of the > young 'uns tried to impress his coworkers with the following: > > Core memory always used odd parity because reading core memory caused the > data to be zeroed. That way odd parity tests would catch the read and > forgot-to-write cycle. > > Why does RS232 data generally use even parity? > > I looked up (I was the only one working at the time), looked straight at > him, and said "Paper tape." > > He was crestfallen, the others were merely confused. > > The reason, obvious to anyone who has had to prepare a paper tape offline, > is that if you made a mistake, you backed up the tape, and pressed the > rubout key. On ASCII teletypes, that punched all 8 holes, and programs > that would read the tape would discard rubouts. Even parity allowed > rubouts to pass the parity test. > > -Ric Werme > > P.S. "The only thing worse than fan-fold paper tape is non-fan-fold paper > tape. - Bob Clements > > -- > This message has been scanned for viruses and > dangerous content by MailScanner, and is > believed to be clean. > -- Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9 signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: The "cent key"
Jerry Feldman wrote: On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 11:36:02 -0400 > The ASCII character set was originally a 7 bit character set defined in > the late 1950s when the input device was an ASR 33 teletype. ASCII > started to replace the old baudot code which was (if I remember a 4 bit > code). Five bit code, see http://www.baudot.net/ http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/papertape.html OBtW: I worked as a contractor at a place from time to time and one of the young 'uns tried to impress his coworkers with the following: Core memory always used odd parity because reading core memory caused the data to be zeroed. That way odd parity tests would catch the read and forgot-to-write cycle. Why does RS232 data generally use even parity? I looked up (I was the only one working at the time), looked straight at him, and said "Paper tape." He was crestfallen, the others were merely confused. The reason, obvious to anyone who has had to prepare a paper tape offline, is that if you made a mistake, you backed up the tape, and pressed the rubout key. On ASCII teletypes, that punched all 8 holes, and programs that would read the tape would discard rubouts. Even parity allowed rubouts to pass the parity test. -Ric Werme P.S. "The only thing worse than fan-fold paper tape is non-fan-fold paper tape. - Bob Clements ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: The "cent key"
On 7/8/07, Ted Roche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On my mac I can hold option $ > > On my ThinkPad under FC6, I can just type ¢ By selecting Menu, Character > Map, View, by Unicode Block, Latin-1, finding the character, clicking > Copy, clicking back into the message, selecting Paste. As the French say, "voila!" (Literally, "My hand hurts!")[1] > I'll keep both keyboard layouts around and switch them with > the GNOME panel Keyboard Indicator To that, I say: Voila! I'm thinking the Right Thing to do would be for that keyboard layout to only insert "special"[5] characters when using that third[3] modifier. So maybe you get the Unicode proper-apostrophe with +<'>[8], leaving <'> alone giving you the ASCII multipurpose-single-quote-and-apostrophe character. Assuming, for whatever reason, such a change can't be pushed back to the upstream, it would, I suspect, at least be worthwhile to track down the key layout definitions and create your own variant that implements this behavior. [1] Apologies to Dave Barry.[2] [2] http://sonic.net/~roelofs/humor/cybermuffin.html [3] Third? Shouldn't it be fourth?[4] [4] Shift. Control. Alt. [5] i.e., non-ASCII [7] [6] "I am not a number! I am a free man!" [7] i.e., Unicode, HTML character entities, etc. [8] "Super" being the traditional fourth modifier.[9] [9] http://world.std.com/~jdostale/kbd/SpaceCadet.html -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: The "cent key"
Travis Roy wrote: > > On my mac I can hold option $ > > Just my 2¢ > ___ On my ThinkPad under FC6, I can just type ¢ By selecting Menu, Character Map, View, by Unicode Block, Latin-1, finding the character, clicking Copy, clicking back into the message, selecting Paste. How hard could it be? I'll bet there's an easier way... time to read the rtfm X and GNOME makes it pretty easy. Install the US English-International keyboard layout and specify the third modifier key - right control works pretty well for me. Cents is ¢ - shift-modifier C, ¢. There's my two cents. As a benefit, I get registration marks and a few other useful characters, like copyright and euros. On the downside, it changes the single-quote to an apostrophe character, which just won't do, since I'm coding all day long, so I'll keep both keyboard layouts around and switch them with the GNOME panel Keyboard Indicator -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: The "cent key"
On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 11:36:02 -0400
Jason Stephenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > Now you have my $.02. (Why isn't there a cent key on the IMB keyboard??)
>
> The spot where most typewriters (even those from IBM) have the cent key
> is taken up by ^ on most computer keyboards. Interestingly, the cent
> character is not a part of the basic ASCII character set. A bit
> surprising, really, when you consider that until email came along the @
> was relegated to mostly archaic uses as a short hand for "each."
The ASCII character set was originally a 7 bit character set defined in
the late 1950s when the input device was an ASR 33 teletype. ASCII
started to replace the old baudot code which was (if I remember a 4 bit
code). Note that IBM mainframes used BCDIC (then EBCDIC). Some teletype
machines could be set to use the 8th bit as a parity bit for punched
paper tape. Most major computer manufacturers (other than IBM such as
Digital, GE) used ASCII and even IBM used ASCII in their printers. I had
to patch the translate tables in a 370 so the system would print things
like { for C programming,. The IBM keyboards lacked a couple of
characters, such as the curly brace.
--
Jerry Feldman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
___
gnhlug-discuss mailing list
gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org
http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: The "cent key"
On Jul 8, 2007, at 11:36 AM, Jason Stephenson wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> Now you have my $.02. (Why isn't there a cent key on the IMB >> keyboard??) > > The spot where most typewriters (even those from IBM) have the cent > key > is taken up by ^ on most computer keyboards. Interestingly, the cent > character is not a part of the basic ASCII character set. A bit > surprising, really, when you consider that until email came along > the @ > was relegated to mostly archaic uses as a short hand for "each." > > Just my 2d. On my mac I can hold option $ Just my 2¢ ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
The "cent key"
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Now you have my $.02. (Why isn't there a cent key on the IMB keyboard??) The spot where most typewriters (even those from IBM) have the cent key is taken up by ^ on most computer keyboards. Interestingly, the cent character is not a part of the basic ASCII character set. A bit surprising, really, when you consider that until email came along the @ was relegated to mostly archaic uses as a short hand for "each." Just my 2d. ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
