FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  239 (23/11/00)

@T ISSUE

Regarding your reply to Roger Warwick in his request for information about the @ sign (F!F!F! November 8th). The earliest known use of the @ sign -- technically known as the amphora -- was in a letter written by a Florentine merchant on May 4th 1536 when the sign represented a measure of capacity based on the terracotta jars used to transport grain and liquid in the ancient Mediterranean world.

The separation of the name of the user from the name of the machine on which the user is working by the @ sign in all e-mail addresses was the idea of Ray Tomlinson, an engineer at ARPAnet contractor Bolt, Beranek and Newman, in 1972.  All this information and much more can be found on my personal web site at:
http://members.tripod.co.uk/

rogerdarlington/index.html

Roger Darlington

Surely if & = ampersand (= ampers AND)
then logically @ = ampersat (= ampers AT)?
Ian McRae

I read that the '@' sign is called the strudel - presumably since it looks
like an apple strudel end-on.
Dr Michael Hal Sosabowski

Further to your item about the "@" symbol, I have not been successful in finding it on the French keypad. I often have to write in French and can change to the French "clavier" which enables me to put in most of the accents. There are several differences from the English keypad - our "m" key for example gives a comma in lower case and a question mark in upper and the m is found on the colon/semi-colon key - and it takes some getting used to. I recently inspected a French computer and the @ was one of two symbols on the 0 key, lower case (the numbers all need the shift key). I did not find out how to distinguish between the two. I assume they use @ in e-mail addresses, so how can I get it?

Tony Bathurst, Bridgwater, Somerset

Thanks to Roger Darlington and everyone else who wrote in with their thoughts on this interesting little character. The @ symbol on a French keyboard is, as Tony Bathurst points out, on the ‘0’ key. It’s accessed by holding down the Alt Gr key, to the right of the spacebar. (Gr is short for green; on older keyboards third key options were printed in green, to distinguish them from the second ‘shift’ key option). 

SHIFT OF OPINION

Regarding Tom Maxwell's problem of accidentally hitting Caps lock and not realising it till too late (F!F!F! November 8th), in Windows 98 you can set the system to make a warning sound when this happens. Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel, then double-click on Accessibility Options. Choose the Keyboard tab, and tick the box for Use Togglekeys. Tick Apply and OK. You will then hear a bleep when you hit the Caps lock and a different tone when you hit again to release it.
Roger Davis, Leeds
 

Tom Maxwell might be interested in an add-in for Excel, which converts to either upper case or lower case with the option, in the latter case, of the first characters being upper case. The add-in is called "Upper or Lower" and is available free from www.excelman.co.uk/freeware.htm
Dr Colin D Lewis 

As pointed out in your column the other day Microsoft Word can change the case of letters typed incorrectly. Amazingly I had just written a program to do this type of thing the other week. A friend of mine recently had an injury and kept pressing the Caps Lock as Mr Maxwell referred to in his email to you. The program was written in about an hour and is available on my free space at: http://www.roe09.freeserve.co.uk/index.htm

The program is entirely free and could well be updated if enough people use it and mail with suggestions for improvement. What started out as a bit of fun programming may actually turn out to be useful to people whose typing is not good for one reason or another.

Andrew Roe

Your response to Tom Maxwell set me thinking and I have discovered yet
another feature of Word. If you select whole sentences the F3 toggle switches between Upper Case, Lower Case and Sentence Case (rather than Title Case). If, however, you go to Change Case on the Format menu and select tOGGLE cASE this also corrects instances of capitals within sentences, e.g. proper names, days of the week, etc.

Better still, choose Tools; AutoCorrect and put a tick in the Correct accidental use of cAPS lOCK key?  Word will then automatically correct this problem as you type.
Miranda Rix

Some excellent suggestions, thanks to everyone who wrote in.

EVEN SMARTER SEARCHING

With reference the Boot Camp article on search engines (November 8th), instead of having to move from search site to search site why not use the excellent Mariner site at www.minervatech.u-net.com/mariner which lists 15 sites and allows a single search entry to be applied to any or all of them. It is far quicker and removes any risk of losing or mis-typing addresses.

Brian Clarke

You missed mentioning the best program available for making fast and simple Internet searches. The program is called Copernic 2000, and can be downloaded free from www.copernic.com. Basically it uses up to 15 search engines simultaneously and then collates the retrieved information into to one window to make browsing very fast and easy.
Jonathan Barr

You suggested bookmarking a range of search engines. However, if you install the three Google hot buttons (www.google.com), most of the other search engines are instantly available at the bottom of each search page and with one click the same search is just repeated on a different engine!

Alastair Garrow, London W1

More great ideas, thanks, now on to some new problems

COOL SOUNDS?

My computer started grunting about once per second through the external speakers after booting up. This lasted for a few seconds, stopped and then started again several times. I restarted the computer but the sound persisted. It was not affected by the volume control for the speakers and the microphone was switched off. I shut everything down for a while and it was back to normal when I rebooted later in the day. What could be the cause and should I do something about it?
Derek Butters

The fact that the grunting noise occurs at boot up, isn’t affected by the volume control and eventually goes away leads me to suspect a dry bearing on the power supply or processor cooling fan, warning of imminent failure. You can easily confirm that by switching off or disconnecting the speakers and see if it still happens. If so replacing the fan or power supply module isn’t a difficult or expensive job but it’s best left to an expert if you’re not familiar with the innards of your machine. 

FORM FILLER
I have the need to fill in many forms to submit planning listed building and building regulation applications to Local Authorities.  These forms have to be filled in and up to six copies each submitted.  I would like to scan these forms and fill them in on my computer before running off the necessary copies.  Can you tell me if it is possible to reproduce forms in this manner to carry out this task?
Norman Tomson

It can be done but it’ll probably take longer than just filling out one form and photocopying, or scanning and copying it on your PC.  If the form is a relatively simple design scan it and use the scanners optical character recognition (OCR) software to turn it into an editable text document. Alternatively, you could scan it as an image and use a paint box program to insert text boxes in the appropriate locations.