Date: Wed, 24 Dec 97 02:12:16 -0900
From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com>
Subject: Followup - More Fun With Special Characters

Keyword: Advocacy, Why Macs Are Better

This follow-up message is from:

Ronald Lee Hutcherson

Yes, Windows 3.1 does has a system utility that works just like
Keycaps--I used it just yesterday and thought, "Oh, this is the same as
the Keycaps utility." Except that it will tell you what Alt+xxx
combination goes with special characters. The xxx numbers are really the
ASCII codes of the characters, so if pressing the space bar on a Windows
PC is too simple for you, just hold down the Alt key, type "032", and
then release the Alt key. ;-)

So, Windows does have keycaps, but that does NOT make it equal to
Macintosh. You see, on the Macintosh, Option+2 always returns the TM
except in rare cases such as with the MT Extra font. My Macintosh has 50
fonts installed and 49 of them print TM with Option+2--the black sheep is
American Heritage, which is excused since it's a dictionary font. On
Windows PCs, just about the only consistent special character is the
right curly quote. I found that only a few of the many fonts on my PC had
the TM character, and that the special characters were often moved from
one ASCII code to another, so that in one font I could type a TM and if I
changed the font, it would become some other special character. Kind of
makes it useless, doesn't it?