Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 December 29

= December 29 =

The numeral 7
The numeral "7" is often written in European style with a line or a slash through the middle of it (i.e., 7 ). When one uses Microsoft Word and/or Excel, is there some type of setting that will make a "normal" 7 look like the European 7 ? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 05:16, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You need a font which has '7' crossed in it. Ruslik_ Zero 07:51, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You can use strike through, as you did in your post. It should be beside the underline, bold, italic options. LongHairedFop (talk) 10:19, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Of the countless font families from the font catalog I can access when using OpenOffice, "Bradley Hand" is the only one sporting a crossed seven. It is a fantasy font, so probably not something you want for common use. Unicode has 82 characters with "Digit Seven" in the name, but none are specifically crossed. Strike through can also be achieved using the Unicode "Combining Short Stroke Overlay" U+0335; so  produces "7&#x0335;". Depending on the font, it may look slightly better than the result of standard strike through , but it may also look worse, and great it ain't.  --Lambiam 15:52, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * The crossed seven is only commonly seen in handwriting, though. In typeset texts, an uncrossed Arabic numeral 7 has always been used, as seen here in an 18th-century German book. --Lambiam 16:38, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * When you say arabic numeral 7, you probably mean european numeral 7. The arabic seven is ٧.  Common mistake, perpetrated largely by political correctness.  85.76.64.226 (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * No, he means 7 of the Arabic numerals. ٧ is of the Eastern Arabic numerals. Elizium23 (talk) 17:36, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * And if you read more than the title of the article, you will discover that european numerals are based on various indian numerals, and have nothing to do with the numerals in arabic script. Newsflash: there really are genuine arabic numerals - and they are not the european numerals!  The idea that european numerals are somehow "arabic" is really just a misrepresentation of history.  In arabic languages, european numerals are not even called arabic numerals, they are called hindi (= indian) numerals.  The fiction only persists in the west.
 * The Wikipedia article on european numerals is indeed called "arabic numerals." But deducing the origin of numerals from an article title is not the best strategy for understanding reality.  (Or: the title is a misrepresentation (read: lie) that happens to be a politically correct conveniency for various parties.)  85.76.76.45 (talk) 19:05, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This IP user is clearly not here to build an encyclopedia (as can be seen from their contributions this year), so I extended their existing block to all of Wikipedia. ◅ Sebastian 19:28, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The user is correct in stating that the numerals called "Arabic" are actually "Indian" or "Hindi." They were introduced to Eurpoeans by Arabic cultures in North African. So, they could just as well be called "North African numerals" by Europeans. Overall, they became adopted as part of the Latin character set that includes the alphabet. Some letters have been added over time. Some have been removed (like the & - it used to be a letter and now is a symbol). In the end, it doesn't matter what numbers are called. This is a question of fonts. Are there any fonts that include a 7 ? 97.82.165.112 (talk) 19:55, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * & was never *truly a letter*..it is a symbol called 'ampersand', which means 'and'. its form derived from combining the letters in the Latin word for 'and', which is 'et'. Its name is of English origin, and is shortened from 'and per se and', which signified that the symbol itself was and, as well as being the word and. It was once common practice in English to refer to all characters that were also words in this fashion: thus 'a per se a', 'I per se I', 'O per se O'. so & was 'and per se and' which became 'ampersand' effectual eventually. Firejuggler86 (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If you want to nit-pick, the & used to be part of the alphabet. You can argue that the alphabet used to contain symbols that weren't letters, but then you have to go back in time and rewrite schoolbooks. My school book clearly stated that there were 27 letters in the alphabet. The letter after Z was &. By the time my kids went to school, & was dropped and there were 26 letters. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 12:50, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

path in zsh
I updated to MacOS Big Sur, and (as recommended) changed my shell from bash to zsh. Now I have not found the magic words to tell zsh, permanently and in multiple terminal windows, to include ~/bin in my $PATH. Help please. —Tamfang (talk) 18:09, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * , that would be ~/.zshrc: forum Elizium23 (talk) 18:12, 29 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for playing, but I didn't ask WHERE to put the magic words. —Tamfang (talk) 19:06, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Check out this post: . It shows a few ways to add a new entry to your path, including   RudolfRed (talk) 21:50, 29 December 2020 (UTC)