Re: character encoding confusion

[Tim X]

patrol <patrol_boat@hotmail.com> writes:

> I created a program in C that requires the degree symbol. The mode
> line indicates that Emacs is using the Latin-1 character encoding.
> According to Latin-1 encoding tables, the degree symbol is encoded as
> decimal 176, so that's what I used in my code. But when the character
> printed, it wasn't the degree symbol; it was a "shaded box" looking
> thing. Then I looked at an ASCII table here (http://
> www.asciitable.com/), and it says that 176 is indeed the shaded box
> that was printed in my program, and the degree character was decimal
> 248. So I used 248 in my code, and I got the degree symbol I wanted.
>
> But all this leaves me with the question that if Emacs was supposedly
> encoding the file in Latin-1, why doesn't the code for the degree
> symbol match up with the Latin-1 table? Why does it instead match up
> with some non-standard "extended" ASCII that I just happened to come
> across.
>

There has been a lot of chnage in emacs encoding and there are a number
of possibilities. 

1. What version of emacs?

2. Can you clarify what you mean by you created a program in C that
requires the degree symbol. Do you mean it needs that character in the
source code, as standard input or as a value in an input file? Are you
running the program inside emacs or are you generating datafiles for the
program to consume etc. 

3. Depending on how this is all interacting, your OS locale settings,
whether your running in GUI mode under X or within an xterm or the
console can all be relevant. 

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au