[Taxacom] The 'X' factor

[Curtis Clark]

On 5/19/2010 5:18 PM, Frederick W. Schueler wrote:
> * and more importantly, the character that one computer program
> interprets as the "multiplication thingy" will be interpreted as a black
> blot or a musical instrument by another program.
>    

That's why there are interoperability standards. ASCII is one. Unicode 
is another. Part of interoperability is the use of default encodings, 
and the proper tagging of non-default ones.

By default, every XML file, including RDF/RSS and XHTML web pages, is 
encoded in UTF-8, one of the Unicode encodings. In such a file, × is 
always represented by the same byte sequence. In a properly made font, 
it will display either as the "times" sign, or else as the font's 
"missing character" glyph, often a box or question mark. If it displays 
as a musical instrument, something is broken, either the font or the 
program displaying the text.

Microsoft Word is always substituting "curly quotes" (“ and ”) for 
straight ASCII quotes, and m- and n-dashes (— and –) for doubled 
hyphens; these are also non-ASCII characters, as are § section marks, 
†extinct species, degree° signs, and µm. It's true that × looks like x, 
just as µ looks like u (a decade ago I saw so many "um" in scientific 
presentations that I started calling my colleagues "uicrobiologists).

In ancient times, you could type _Encelia_ x _laciniata_, and the 
typesetter for the journal would set /Encelia/ × /laciniata/. Now we can 
make our own italics. It's an artifact of technology that it's somewhat 
less easy to produce our own times signs.

-- 
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Director, I&IT Web Development                   +1 909 979 6371
University Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona