Re: IBM 1620 invalid character symbol

From: Ken Whistler via Unicode <unicode_at_unicode.org>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2017 08:45:19 -0700

Leo,

Yeah, I know. My point was that by examining the physical typewriter
keys (the striking head on the typebar, not the images on the keypads),
one could see what could be generated *by* overstriking. I think
Philippe's suggestion that it was simply an overstrike of "X" with an
"I" is probably the simplest explanation for the actual operation. And
the typeset manuals just grabbed some type that looked similar. Note
that the typewriters in question didn't have a vertical bar or
backslash, apparently.

But adding an annotation for similar-looking symbols that could be used
for this is, I agree, probably better than looking for a proposal to
encode some new symbol for this oddball construction.

If it really is an overstrike, then technically, it could probably also
be represented as the sequence <0058, 20D2>, just to represent the data.

--Ken

On 9/25/2017 11:34 PM, Leo Broukhis wrote:
> If it was implemented as an overprint, either )^H|^H( or \^H|^H/ and
> was intended to signify an invalid character
> (for example, in the text part of core dumps, where a period is used
> by hexdump -C), then there would not be a physical key to generate it.
Received on Tue Sep 26 2017 - 10:46:06 CDT

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