Strange characters

On 1/23/2019 10:04 AM, swalker wrote:
Look at this

neat� nine lives minus 1.

I know the guy who replied to the email didn't do this and it appears
on all his replies regardless of the subject.

What he wrote was "neat nine lives minus 1" in a reply to a link to
a headline I sent about a cat going over a dam and being rescued.

What's up?


this is senseless --- What are you trying to say?

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| I'm quite aware of what a non-breaking space does. However, I retain my
| assertion than an nbsp _followed by an ordinary space_ serves little
| purpose : it will not stop the line being broken at that point. I suppose
| if the gap so produced is _not_ at the end of a line, it _does_ force a
| double space which might otherwise have been rendered as a single one,
| but it does seem a backhanded way of achieving that. (A double nbsp -
| with no ordinary space - would have that effect and also prevent the
| line being broken at that point, if that's important.)


Lucky for the rest of us that you don't write the laws.

I use them a lot, when I want more space between things.
I also use them for indents. I don't like the newish fashion
of having no indents for paragraphs. And I use them for
things like table of contents, to indent a list under another
item. It's not about line returns. It's about formatting.

A double nbsp *is* the same thing. I don't know whether
the software in question would treat it the same. It might just
render it literally. The point being that the problem is with
the software, not the usage. &#x; is valid HTML where xx
is a character code. Some sites even use it to hide things,
such as using &#x; to spell out an email address so bots
won't see it.

If the software in question wer going to convert copied
HTML to UTF-8 then it should process it properly and not
just assume the source is UTF-8. But in their defense it
does get complicated. There is no required marker to denote
UTF-8 or any other encoding in files (except maybe unicode-16).
much less copied snippets.

So the only way to check is to "sniff" it. In other words,
invalid UTF-8 should be an indicator that the text needs to be
processed as something else, not an indicator that someone
deliberately wrote invalid UTF-8! That would be like assuming
everything is English and converting the Spanish si to ?? to
show that si is not an English word.

In message , Mayayana
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| I'm quite aware of what a non-breaking space does. However, I retain my
| assertion than an nbsp _followed by an ordinary space_ serves little
| purpose : it will not stop the line being broken at that point. I suppose
| if the gap so produced is _not_ at the end of a line, it _does_ force a
| double space which might otherwise have been rendered as a single one,
| but it does seem a backhanded way of achieving that. (A double nbsp -
| with no ordinary space - would have that effect and also prevent the
| line being broken at that point, if that's important.)


Lucky for the rest of us that you don't write the laws.
Nor you (-:

I use them a lot, when I want more space between things.

Reasonable, _in HTML_ (or anything else that recognises NBSPs in
whatever form). In plain-text emails/posts, less so.

I also use them for indents. I don't like the newish fashion
of having no indents for paragraphs. And I use them for

(I used to rebel against it too, using three spaces - or a tab -
instead. However, I think blank lines between paragraphs instead has
become the norm.)

things like table of contents, to indent a list under another
item. It's not about line returns. It's about formatting.

A double nbsp *is* the same thing. I don't know whether

As what? Using "x" to denote an nbsp, " ax b " is _not_ the same as
" axxb " in HTML; the former will break if it comes out as being where a
line break would be ("a" on the end of one line, "b" on the next), the
latter will be moved to the next line. If you're forcing the formatting
such that you know it _isn't_ at the end of a line, that's breaking the
intention of HTML (use e. g. a .pdf).

the software in question would treat it the same. It might just
render it literally. The point being that the problem is with
the software, not the usage. &#x; is valid HTML where xx

Agreed.

is a character code. Some sites even use it to hide things,
such as using &#x; to spell out an email address so bots
won't see it.

A good use.

If the software in question wer going to convert copied
HTML to UTF-8 then it should process it properly and not
just assume the source is UTF-8. But in their defense it
does get complicated. There is no required marker to denote
UTF-8 or any other encoding in files (except maybe unicode-16).
much less copied snippets.

So the only way to check is to "sniff" it. In other words,
invalid UTF-8 should be an indicator that the text needs to be
processed as something else, not an indicator that someone
deliberately wrote invalid UTF-8! That would be like assuming
everything is English and converting the Spanish si to ?? to
show that si is not an English word.

Agreed. The problem is that the person _originating_ the message
probably doesn't know there's anything amiss, as nothing wrong is
visible to him/her.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Wisdom is the ability to cope. - the late (AB of C) Michael Ramsey,
quoted by Stephen Fry (RT 24-30 August 2013)

In message , Mathedman
writes:
On 1/23/2019 10:04 AM, swalker wrote:
Look at this
neat� nine lives minus 1.
I know the guy who replied to the email didn't do this and it
appears
on all his replies regardless of the subject.
What he wrote was "neat nine lives minus 1" in a reply to a link
to
a headline I sent about a cat going over a dam and being rescued.
What's up?


this is senseless --- What are you trying to say?

I presume you've missed most of the posts in the thread, which have
deduced that the first character between the words in "neat nine" (note
the apparent double space) wasn't an ordinary space.

(I doubt swalker is still with us, but if you are, it'd be interesting
to know whether your correspondent intended the character to be a space
of some sort, or something else, such as a colon, or even a smiley.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Wisdom is the ability to cope. - the late (AB of C) Michael Ramsey,
quoted by Stephen Fry (RT 24-30 August 2013)

On 1/23/19 11:55 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , swalker
writes:
Look at this

neat� nine lives minus 1.

[snip]

Note the double space after "neat".

In Thunderbird, I see three characters between 'neat' and a single
space. The first is an 'i' with 2 dots over it. The second is an
upside-down question mark. The third is 1/2 (as 1 character).

[snip]

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Church teachings are but fiction. I have knowledge of their inanity."
-- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

In message , Mark Lloyd
writes:
On 1/23/19 11:55 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , swalker
writes:
Look at this

neat� nine lives minus 1.

[snip]

Note the double space after "neat".

In Thunderbird, I see three characters between 'neat' and a single
space. The first is an 'i' with 2 dots over it. The second is an
upside-down question mark. The third is 1/2 (as 1 character).

[snip]

Too much snipping. The post I was replying to included this text:
---
neat� nine lives minus 1.

I know the guy who replied to the email didn't do this and it appears
on all his replies regardless of the subject.

What he wrote was "neat nine lives minus 1" in a reply to a link to
---
The first line, when I saw it in Turnpike (and again in the snippet I've
posted above), contains what you see: i with diæresis, inverted question
mark, and half. The second line - the one beginning "What he wrote" -
just contains a double space. I am assuming the OP manually typed the
second extract (of what he thinks his correspondent "wrote").
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

By the very definition of "news," we hear very little about the dominant
threats to our lives, and the most about the rarest, including terror.
"LibertyMcG" alias Brian P. McGlinchey, 2013-7-23

On Thu, 24 Jan 2019 19:01:03 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Mathedman
writes:
On 1/23/2019 10:04 AM, swalker wrote:
Look at this
neat� nine lives minus 1.
I know the guy who replied to the email didn't do this and it
appears
on all his replies regardless of the subject.
What he wrote was "neat nine lives minus 1" in a reply to a link
to
a headline I sent about a cat going over a dam and being rescued.
What's up?


this is senseless --- What are you trying to say?

Who me? I was curious as to why this happened. Google about the cat if
you want the whole story.

I presume you've missed most of the posts in the thread, which have
deduced that the first character between the words in "neat nine" (note
the apparent double space) wasn't an ordinary space.

(I doubt swalker is still with us, but if you are, it'd be interesting
to know whether your correspondent intended the character to be a space
of some sort, or something else, such as a colon, or even a smiley.)

When I askd him about it he didn't have a clue and I can be sure he
didn't intentionally do anything that make this senseless string
appear.

"swalker" wrote

| Who me? I was curious as to why this happened. Google about the cat if
| you want the whole story.
|

Ignore mathedman. He seems to only post to
complain. Often it's arguing with anti-social posters.
In your case it seems to be just arbitrary. I suspect
he's elderly and only partially aware of what he's doing.

In message , swalker
writes:
On Thu, 24 Jan 2019 19:01:03 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:
[]
I presume you've missed most of the posts in the thread, which have
deduced that the first character between the words in "neat nine" (note
the apparent double space) wasn't an ordinary space.

(I doubt swalker is still with us, but if you are, it'd be interesting
to know whether your correspondent intended the character to be a space
of some sort, or something else, such as a colon, or even a smiley.)

When I askd him about it he didn't have a clue and I can be sure he
didn't intentionally do anything that make this senseless string
appear.

Thanks for coming back! So, I presume he just intended a space (or
double space), and did a copy-and-paste from something like Word (?),
and his emailing software didn't warn him. (Or he was using emailing
software that uses non-ASCII directly - and, in this case, pointlessly -
without inserting the relevant encoding.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Whoever decided to limit tagline length to 68 characters can kiss my