On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 08:24:53 -0000, caeruleancentaur
<caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:

> Several years ago I was ceruleancentaur on Yahoo. When I returned to
> Yahoo more recently I couldn't use the name because "it was already in
> use"!

That might have been because your old name was still there.

> I tried to use the a-e ligature using Alt-145, but it wouldn't work.

That's a single quote left, if you mean a decimal 145, in MS-specific
Win-1252 encoding.
Try Alt-0230.

> I'll never understand why ASCII works sometimes and not other times.

ASCII, specifically, should always work. However, ASCII is only the 7-bit
set of characters used for English and (afaik) some Malay languages, incl.
Bahasa Indonesia. Any other characters (such as æ) have been something of
a mess, but Unicode is bringing order to that mess. Unfortunately, older
software doesn't necessarily work with Unicode.

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
Tsunamis (they are not tidal waves):
The gods are angry; Darfur is one obscenity.