Re: Character mangling test
Re: Character mangling test
- Subject: Re: Character mangling test
- From: Richard 23 <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 23:18:34 -0800
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Well, that test was a miserable failure or a rousing success, depending on
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one's point of view. NOT ONE CHARACTER MADE IT THRU UNSCATHED! Worse, as
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many
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of you know, many of them mapped to otherwise normal but contextually
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meaningless (or wrong) characters. And worse still, AOL mangled several of
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the characters before they even left their system.
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I tried Richard 23's script. It mostly works, but (with no offense, and with
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many thanks for his efforts), it's a kludge. It will confuse newbies and
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make
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this list labor heavy and clique-ish.
I'd be happy to try out your solution...this one has been available for
constructive review since before November 2000.
Clique-ish? Are you sure about this? Mostly? What doesn't work?
Kludge? What do you call the current system? It's not possible to
completely dekludge a kludge. I'm not too worried about it.
If anyone wants to use it they can. If someone comes up with something
simpler then I'm all for it.
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And suggestions based on my original posting, in that order.
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[how to type original character on US keyboard / Geneva] (description)
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what to type instead
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[option-,] (less than or equals)
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" is less than or equal to "
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-----------------------------
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[option-.] (greater than or equals)
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" is greater than or equal to "
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[option-return] (the line continuation character)
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keep your lines short; I can live with ==>, but can newbies?
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-----------------------------
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[option-\] (a left chevron)
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<< hopefully, newbies will never need to contend with these
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.....
Most of the characters you posted aren't really used in scripts
except perhaps in quoted strings. I didn't even go there because
quoted strings can contain anything and since many of the > 127
characters map to alphanumerics already in use it's just not very
practical to try and cover those...may as well binhex....
I agree about the '==>' but nothing looks like the option-L character
so I chose something that's visually suggestive (to me I guess).
Using [option-L] is possible but replacing one character with many
makes the line wrap problem more pronounced.
The other characters I mapped, other than the chevrons which do turn
up now and then, << and >> are more visually intuitive than + and ;
and is less space consuming than the [option-x] equivalents. The
wordier it gets and the more symbols one tries to handle, the more
obfuscated it actually becomes and harder for a simple script to
handle properly.
<<event sysobeep>>
seems more readable than
[option-\]event sysobeep[option-shift-\]
and is more likely to allow the original line to fit an email line.
also with the others I address, the two character symbols below:
less than or equal <=
greater than or equal >=
not equal /=
all compile directly from email even without my tool. This means a
preprocessed script will compile fine if it includes no chevrons
and no continuation characters. And if someone really wants the
english wordy variants there's a "Use English" setting described in
my Read Me that tells how to decode to those forms by default.
The [option-,] [option-.] [option-=] are less intuitive, less readable,
and may not even map properly for non-us keyboards. The
<=, >=, /= symbols are hardcoded into AppleScript an will compile
regardless of localization AFAIK.
Even manually, spotting ==> at the end of a line, and
<< >> surrounding raw codes
isn't nearly as bad as distinguishing the
, from option-l or ,
+ from option-\ or +
; from option-shift-\ or -
All my script focuses on are the those comparison symbols,
the continuation character, the chevrons, and tabs to (4) spaces.
How this could make it any more confusing than it is now and has been
for months I really don't quite understand. I couldn't make it more
confusing if I tried.
Using the script you don't even have to think about it.
Try it on several different scripts, even mangled ones
which weren't preprocessed. I think you'll find you do
very little hand editing and don't have to think about
keystroke combinations.
I'll resist going on about it further.
You all know where you can get the info by now so it's up to you
to decide what if anything to do with it.
Questions/comments? I'm at your disposal.
R23