Re: "Kerning?" (fwd)

[Peter Evans peterev@xxxxxxxx]

I'm sorry to see Dick Weltz appears to have gone off in a huff.

> The lowercase y-dieresis, incidentally *is* an ASCII character and was part
> of the "upper ASCII" set introduced with production of the first IBM PC's.

Thanks, but I knew what was meant the first time. Repeating an assertion
adds nothing to its persuasiveness or credibility. ASCII is a seven-bit
code, no? "Upper ASCII" is of course an established idiom (though I think
a confusing and unfortunate one); anything introduced with the first IBM
PCs can't be ASCII; "upper ASCII" is not ASCII; lowercase y-dieresis is not
in ASCII. Normally I've no desire to be schoolmarmish about such solecisms
(and I don't think I was the first time around), but I'm amused when
they're repeated with the implication that they are expert testimony and I
on the other hand am something that's "come out of all the world's woodwork
to argue about it".

Now, I don't think anyone here has claimed that, at least in the mid 20th
century, y-dieresis was anything more than an oddity. I hadn't realized
how odd it was, and was delighted to read about it. Therefore I raise my
glass of Hoegaarden to DW, who I hope was simply in a bad mood when he
wrote his irritated envoi. As David Auerbach says,

>We all got to learn some off-topic history.

And I wish I could learn more. (I used to post questions about *anything*
on a certain BBS, but its population shrank as the Internet ballooned, and
the modem I'm using now refuses to mate with it. So, doing cold turkey on
my favorite BBS, every day I fight the temptation to post irrelevancies here.)
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Peter Evans