[AT] Some ads from the 7/31 Lancaster Farming

[Mike Sloane]

If you are using a MS Windows operating system, Charlie, you have those 
characters. Just go to "Accessories", then "System Tools", then 
"Character Map". That will show you all the special characters and the 
keystrokes needed to print them. For instance of you want to show 80°, 
you need to type "80" and then hold down the "alt" key while hitting 
"248" on the number pad to the right (NOT above the letters). That's my 
2¢ worth (<alt> 0162). :-)

But, the more I think about it, the Lancaster Farming problem is more 
likely the result of a problem with their OCR (Optical Character 
Recognition) application failing to read the printed version of the ads 
and just substituting nonsense characters in order to alert the operator 
to a problem (which is obviously being ignored).

What the problem is with your correspondents' messages is anyone's 
guess. One possible cause might be "noisy" telephone lines, although the 
nature of TCP/IP protocol is supposed to eliminate the problem of 
"garbled" messages.

Mike

On 8/1/2010 9:19 AM, charlie hill wrote:
> Hi Mike,  I wasn't criticizing your good work and I guess I used the
> wrong example but I often see that.
> Stuff printed in characters that I don't even have on my keyboard and I
> just wondered how it happens.
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Mike Sloane" <mikesloane at verizon.net>
> Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 6:27 AM
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Subject: Re: [AT] Some ads from the 7/31 Lancaster Farming
>
>> In this particular case, Charlie, that is the way they show up in the
>> on-line ads. I use Firefox browser, and I checked to see if MS Internet
>> Explorer shows up the same way - that used to be a common problem, but
>> it isn't here, the odd characters still show up. So it isn't a problem
>> at your end; Lancaster Farming is probably using some kind of antique
>> application to either scan the printed ads or upload them to the server.
>>
>> Mike