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    Bob Balaban

     

    In Theory...

    Introducing "Geek-o-terica"

    Bob Balaban  April 18 2009 01:17:05 PM
    Greetings, Geeks!

    I was getting bored with stuff, so I decided to make up a new term: Geek-o-terica. "Geek" because this is kind of a blog for geeks, and I've always introduced postings by shouting that out.

    The "o-terica" part is there because it is reminiscent of (is actually a non-null substring of, for you Geeks out there) the word "esoterica", which basically (pun intended) means "things understood by or meant for a select few" (NOT the face cream!). It also means "recondite", but if I said that, you'd have to go look that up too. This is also cool, because the origin of the word "esoteric" is Greek, which, if you remove the "r" is.... ok, never mind.

    So. I thought I'd start a series (meaning, when I feel like it) of blog posts on specific Notes/Domio/Whatever technical topics. LotusScript or @Function or CAPI snippets or tips, perhaps other topics which interest me, and which I therefore assume have at least a small chance of interesting someone else. This will be different from SNTT (Show 'N' Tell Thursdays), because I'm not going to force myself to offer complete code samples, and I'm certainly not going to be constrained by what day of the week it happens to be when I get inspired to post.

    I've started a list of future Geek-o-terica topics, please post suggestions for topics you'd like to see.

    For my kickoff Geek-o-teric offering, here's a little something I like to call, "Multi-Language Character Sets, What They Are, and How to Use Them" (MLCS-WTAAHTUT). This isn't new material, in fact I first wrote it over 2 or 3 days in a hotel room in London in 2001. It was originally a 2-hour Freelance presentation (remember Freelance?) for a customer who wanted some technical background on character sets, LMBCS, Unicode, and fonts. I used Symphony to convert it to PDF format, and here it is. Sorry for the slidemaster...

    Ever wondered what the differences are between LMBCS and Unicode? Hungering to know the real impact of coding strings in utf-8 vs. utf-32? Didn't know there was such a thing as utf-32? Always had a secret itch because you weren't clear on the precise distinction between "character" and "glyph"? Mystified by ligatures? Never knew for sure why programmers groan when confronted with EBCDIC?

    Well then, you have most definitely come to the right place, my fellow Geeks! Read on, and enjoy!


    Geek ya next time.

    (Need expert application development architecture/coding help? Contact me at: bbalaban, gmail.com)
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