[IxDA Discuss] Bringing typography to design – High-ASCII

[Adrian Howard]

On 28 Feb 2007, at 17:43, David Cortright wrote:
[snip]
> I've found it most useful for using proper fractions like 1½, using  
> proper
> dimensions like 1024×768, using the em dash as you can see  
> throughout this
> email, and – my favorite – using a middle dot intead of a hyphen to ·
> separate · items · on · a · line. I hope you find it useful.
[snip]

The problem is, of course, that these characters are _not_ ASCII.  
There are only 95 printable ASCII characters - and those ain't on the  
list. What appears on your box as an em-dash might appear as garbage  
characters on somebody else's screen who happen to be using different  
fonts or conventions. I, for example, have no idea what your fraction  
is.

Typography is a wonderful tool - but if the reader sees something  
different from what you write then it's not a great deal of use :-)

See <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html> for a  
somewhat developer centric description of some of the issues  
involved. The wikipedia entry on ASCII <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
ASCII> is also worth a read.

Cheers,

Adrian