Richard J. wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
P.S. An almost totally off topic question - should I avoid using the
pound sterling symbol "?" when posting to usenet? (I note that
Paul's post above has transferred the symbol into a "?" question
mark.)

I think the problem lies at your end. The post in which you wrote
"£250" was sent with (according to the headers):

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

It displays correctly on my PC, and so does Paul's reply. But all the
pound signs are rendered as "?" in the post that I'm replying to. In
that one, the headers include:

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

So it looks as if you've changed a setting somewhere between those two
posts.

HTH
--
Richard J.


Arrrghhh - I'm suffering from brain fade of the utmost order! The
setting that changed was in my mind rather than on my machine, and I
can assure you it wasn't intentional...

When typing the above I managed to substitute a "?" question mark when
I was trying to type a "£" pound sterling symbol - and in so doing
I've managed to cause a ridiculous confusion, so my utmost apologies!


Incidentally, looking back I see that Paul Corfield's post where he
quotes my previous post displays just fine - in fact when using Google
Groups (which, for my sins I use to post to usenet) there are two ways
of replying to a post, and when I use the simpler reply method then it
would appear to encode the post with the "quoted-printable" format, so
any previous "£" sterling symbols in the quoted text appear just fine.

Bizarrely it is when I use the ever-so-slightly more sophisticated
stand alone reply screen (the main benefit of which is that it allows
one to change the subject line, as I have just done) where which
encodes the post using the "7bit" format, and thus when I use this
screen I find that any "£" sterling symbols in the quoted text get
substituted by the "?" question mark character instead (so I've had to
go back to the above quoted text and correct the mis-substituted
symbol!). Confused... you will be! Or rather... I was!

I'm well aware that others use the GBP notation, but I do find it
somewhat cumbersome, especially on a uk.* newsgroup where I would
expect many readers usenet clients to be able to handle the correct
regional characters. So, how many people get gibberish when I say the
price of a One Day Bus Pass currently stands at £3.50?