In the OP of this Pit thread: 7777777 and .999… == 1, Stealth Potato places a digit with a bar over it:
My purposes in this ATMB thread are to investigate and ask: How’d he do that?
I find that I can duplicate the feat by copying-and-pasting from the original, and I can then edit that to produce other digits and other characters with overbars:
But 0.8̅ isn’t another notation for 1 . . .
But how does one create that notation in a post in the first place?
I am further noticing that there are anomalies and inconsistencies in the placement of the overbar above the digits.
Nor is 0.77̅7̅7̅7̅7̅7̅7̅ another notation for 1 . . .
Nor is 0.7̅7̅7̅7̅7̅7̅7̅ another notation for 1 . . .
Why the anomaly in the above line?
Why is it inconsistent about the placement of the overbar above the character? (Note the placement above the digit 4 in the above lines, and above the 7 also.)
I would like to save the above line with ALL the digits with overbars into a plain-text file, from which I can copy-and-paste it into posts as needed. This will be useful for all future discussions of the value of 0.999… or 0.9̅ as we may now write it.
Nevertheless, copying-and-pasting it into this post seems to work. Go figure.
I still wonder how Stealth Potato did it in the first place. By direct keyboard entry of the Unicode? Looking at the HTML Source View, it appears as ̅ immediately following the digit. But you can’t just type it in that way, and 773 isn’t the right way to enter it at the keyboard. When I try that, I just get: ݳ which doesn’t look right at all.
For me, the overbars are showing up in Chrome (on my PC), but not in Internet Explorer, where I’m just seeing the box-looking character that shows up when it doesn’t know how to display a character.
My second post inadvertently seems to show how it’s done.
I typed ampersand pound-sign 773 semicolon expecting it to appear in the post as ampersand pound-sign 773 semicolon because the vBulletin code, as far as I’ve ever known, fixes the text that way.
But in my post (#2) above, that actually showed up as an overbar character, and it was on top of the blank space just before it.
Lemme try that again, just so’s I can better believe me eyes: 1̅ 2̅ 3̅ 4̅ 5̅ 6̅ etc.
On my broswer (older version of Linux, older version of Gnome, older version of Firefox) the overbars show up almos just fine, except it’s a little inconsistent about just how far above the digit it appears – mostly, clearly above the digit, but sometimes it’s sitting right on top of the digit without any pixels separating them. For digits with flat tops like 5 and 7, then overbar becomes barely visible in that case.
All you folks who can’t see it, what does it look like in Stealth Potato’s OP, which I linked in Post #1 above? Is it just a blob there too?
So I guess the conclusion for me and Stealth Potato is that we should avoid doing this, the better to accommodate those benighted users who are still stuck with IE and certain other browsers.
Oh well. It was, after all, a clever thought, wasn’t it, to use the actual mathematical notation for a mathematical discussion, wasn’t it. Too bad.
Now, if only we could embed Teχ into our posts! Just think of the interminable discussions, just as interminable as 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999…
that we could have then.
Works for me – I see the letter v with a breve symbol over it. I would guess the all the same users who can see my overbar symbols are the ones who can see this. And the users who can’t, can’t, amirite?
BTW, looking at the HTML source for this, I see: ampersand pound-sign 774 semicolon twice in there: Once just before the “v” and once just after. (Did you knowingly type it like that yourself, njtt?) But I only see one breve symbol in your post, above the v. But in this text input box where I am composing this post, I see it twice (before and above the v). Go figure.
ETA: So, shall we all join hands and agree that 0.9̆ ≈ 1 ?
I guess rendering of Unicode combining characters is still too difficult for some browsers! Works fine for me on Chrome and Firefox on Linux, but the overbar totally fails to appear on Android Chrome. Gosh, guys, it’s only been a standard for, what, two decades? :smack:
Unicode isn’t entirely faultless here though; they have separate characters for digits inside five different styles of circle, but no precomposed digits-with-overbars. There’s even a gorram cat face Unicode symbol (U+1F431, ) but no lined digits.
There is a CSS style for overline, but unfortunately there is no way to use it in a post.
In the OP’s overbars, they appear on my screen to be just about even with the top of the digit character, and slightly fainter, with the net result for most of them looking like a digit with a Frankenstein skull. In njtt’s breve-V post, I see two sharp and clear breve symbols, one directly over the V as it (presumably) should be, and one to the left of it and actually extending outside the frame of the post.
Well, you know what they say is the great thing about standards – that there are so many to choose from. But some of the oddball results being described in this thread seem to display an absence of any standards whatever!
My overbars are mostly clearly above the digits, but some (just a few) of them (and it’s inconsistent which ones) are the way Chronos describes.
njtt’s v-breve definitely has two breve HTML codes ( & #774; ), one before the v and one after it. But as displayed by my browser, only the second of these (the one after the v) is displayed, above the v. The first one just isn’t shown. Except when I quoted it a few posts above, in the input text box, both appear. That’s probably because it’s the first non-blank thing in the post, and there’s nothing before it and I suppose browsers differ on how to deal with that.
I see the overbars high enough to be distinct, but lagging behind the digit somewhat.
I see two breves over the V, but lined up with the top corners of the V, not offset. I’m viewing in Chrome.
_
0.99
That should work in all browsers, but has the disadvantage of requiring the code tag and using blank lines above the numbers. Plus, composing is tricky.
) but no lined digits.