[NTLK] Typing the ‘pipe’ character on a Newton

[Grant Hutchinson]

>>> On May 22, 2020, at 4:18 PM, Nic Malone via NewtonTalk <newtontalk at newtontalk.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Does anyone know how to type a ‘pipe’ character, the tall thin character shaped like a overly long ‘l’? I need it for a WEP WiFi network password. I know I could change the WiFi pass phrase but then I’d have to edit the set up on all the other old devices using this network. I have a physical Newton keyboard if that helps.
>> 
>> On the software keyboard, tap shift-\ ... I know it looks like a broken bar, not a solid bar or pipe, but that’s the character I’ve always used. Shift-\ on the physical Newton keyboard should work as well.
> 
> Can confirm. When I got my first programming job, on a Unix system in 1985, the pipe symbol was rendered as two stacked vertical lines, rather than one unbroken one. Vintage hardware might do the same.

The pipe (or “vertical line”) glyph is part of the standard printable ASCII character set. I’m pretty sure that regardless of how it’s visually depicted in the font itself, it’s still getting sent as ASCII 124.

All three of the standard Newton fonts (Casual, Fancy, Simple), as well as Monaco, display the vertical bar as broken.

Oddly enough, there *is* a “broken bar” glyph in ASCII as well: ¦

It’s not directly keyboard accessible on the Newton or the Mac (you’d have to go through the Character Viewer utility under macOS), but on Windows you can type Alt-221.

g.