Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > rec.puzzles > #27874

Re: Musical notes...

Show all headers | View raw

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) posted:

>   I'm working on a Python program in my leisure to typeset paragraphs
>   that way.
> 
...
>   Example output:
>                      y                                            
> An expression like x  is called a power. You can imagine specific

This reminds me of implementing Thai script on a personal computer.
Thai has above-vowels and below-vowels; so the 24 physical lines
of a PC monitor were reduced to 8 lines of text to leave room for
such vowels (and tone-marks).  Some systems combined the above- and
below-vowels onto a single line and got 12 lines of Thai text; but this
required software that checked for collision (i.e. below line N and above
line N+1 both had characters) and inserted spaces as needed.

I was first to implement Thai text on Macintosh.  The above/below
problem disappeared but there was another major problem.  Mac had 8
"text modes" including TextOr and textCopy.  TextCopy effectively did an
erase which defeated Thai script:  I solved this problem with a complex
change to the text drawing firmware.

You ask "Wouldn't French and German have the same problem with their
umlauts, etc.?"  Yes ... IF they were implemented in the way Apple
so proudly bragged about.  They were NOT -- they just had separate font
characters for each combo, exactly as PC did it.  (Thai couldn't use
that approach: it has far more than 256 combos.)

Mike Terry <news.dead.person.stones@darjeeling.plus.com> posted:
> I don't see how a newsgroup can have an "over-riding default" to any particular font.  The choice of 
> font is made when displaying an article by each newsreader client.

I THINK I vaguely recall a reader that defaulted to Courier on rec.p
and maybe 1 or 2 other groups BUT my memory is failing fast.  It would have
been either 'news' on Unix or (less likely?) the "Groups" site once
supported by Do_Be_Evil_Inc.  I don't recall needing a click; maybe it
was an option in a company-wide '.newsrc' file, if there was such a thing.


Meanwhile:  Nobody got a giggle from my brief comment on the music scale?  :-{

-----
James

Back to rec.puzzles | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Musical notes... David Entwistle <qnivq.ragjvfgyr@ogvagrearg.pbz> - 2026-05-27 08:20 +0000
  Re: Musical notes... James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-27 12:58 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... David Entwistle <qnivq.ragjvfgyr@ogvagrearg.pbz> - 2026-05-27 18:06 +0000
      Re: Musical notes... David Entwistle <qnivq.ragjvfgyr@ogvagrearg.pbz> - 2026-05-28 10:15 +0000
  Re: Musical notes... ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2026-05-27 16:25 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-27 17:10 +0000
  Re: Musical notes... James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-28 12:30 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... HenHanna@NewsGrouper <user4055@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-28 18:21 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) - 2026-05-28 18:50 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... David Entwistle <qnivq.ragjvfgyr@ogvagrearg.pbz> - 2026-05-29 17:19 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... Charlie Roberts <croberts@gmail.com> - 2026-05-29 15:48 -0400
      Re: Musical notes... ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2026-05-29 20:59 +0000
        Re: Musical notes... James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-30 12:07 +0000
          Re: Musical notes... James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-30 12:25 +0000
            Re: Musical notes... James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-30 12:33 +0000
            Re: Musical notes... ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2026-05-30 12:56 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... Mike Terry <news.dead.person.stones@darjeeling.plus.com> - 2026-05-29 22:38 +0100
      Re: Musical notes... David Entwistle <qnivq.ragjvfgyr@ogvagrearg.pbz> - 2026-05-30 06:38 +0000
    Re: Musical notes... Phil Carmody <pc+usenet@asdf.org> - 2026-06-05 16:41 +0300
      Re: Musical notes... James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-06-05 14:54 +0000

csiph-web