Glad to see this post is still alive, unfortunately after emailling and posting on every web site I could find about Galluccio or as pronounced GaaLuuuch, never did find anyone who knew this town. If any fodorites know galluccio dont be shy

ttt

Oneillchris, I think you may be accidentally posting on the wrong thread. This is the one about words for pasta. You probably meant to post on your Galluccio thread.

Rex: Where I see those rectangles, should there instead be some letters with diacritical maeks that you typed with the alt-plus-three digits method?

I grew up in Philadelphia where there's a large Calbrese population and they always dropped the vowels on the end of words and made them into rigot (ricotta), locatel (locatelli), cavadeel (cavatelli) as well as others. We now refer to it as "piasonics".

oh, and sauce was always gravy and most pasta was always referred to as macaronis.

Now I'm checking from work and those rectangles look like schwas. I wonder why I can't see it that way on my home computer.

cmt, I don't see much that's unusual, except he did use a couples of schwas (the upside-down "e" symbol, as you clearly know). A glance at the source shows that the Fodor's site rendered these using the following HTML symbol:

& # 6 0 1 ;

I've typed it with spaces between the characters, because if I type it without, I see it as a schwa (but you'll probably see it as a box):

ə

It seems your browser evidently has a problem with that notation. What browser are you using?

I'm using Internet Explorer, and I see:

"r*-goat" and "ma-n*-goat"

where I've replaced the schwas with an asterisk.

- Larry

What's that about # and 601? That's different from holding down ALT and typing three or four digits? How did you get that information by looking at the post?

I use Internet Explorer both at home and at work. At home I have Windows 98 and at work Windows XP. My ISP at home is cable, and at work with have some kind of high-speed dial up, I guess, and are linked to a government agency system.

cmt, this gets very "techie" for this forum, and although I can answer some of your questions, I don't have a complete answer as to why you're seeing what you do. I think Windows 98 may have something to do with it - my wife is running Internet Explorer ("IE") on Windows 98, and she also sees the little boxes. I'm running Windows XT on my computer (as a condition of my retiring, my wife insisted that I have a separate computer, so mine is newer).

A short, quick answer: pages you view on the web are actually text files in a format called HTML ("HyperText Markup Language"). In IE, you can see the source file by selecting "View" on the top menu bar, and then selecting "Source" on the menu that drops down. This will open a text editor with the HTML Source file in it. The HTML is interpreted by your browser to display the web page that you see.

HTML allows the imbedding of links, images, tables, and all the things that make up a web page. It also has certain conventions for the display of special characters that are not part of the standard character set. These start with the character "&" (ampersand), and end with a ";" (semicolon), and what goes in between determines the special character (for instance, "eacute" in between will prompt the browser to produce an e with an acute accent, "é"). If I type an e-acute ("é") in the "post a reply" box using 130 on the numerical keyboard while holding down the ALT key, by the time Fodor's has formatted my message into a web page for display, it has been turned into:

&+eacute+; (but without the + signs)

Another thing you can put between the & and the ; is a number, preceeded by a "#" (hash). I don't know how rex entered his schwa, but it got expressed as:

&+#601+; (again, without the + signs)

That means, "use the character with the numerical code 601". BUT THAT'S A PROBLEM! What a numerical code means depends on a host of factors, including the operating system, the default codepage selected, and so on. That's where I lose the explanation details.

Here it is - I'll see it as a schwa, but you'll see it at home as a box:

ə

Look at the source; you'll see a "#601" between an "&" and a ";".

And there you have it - not the complete explanation, yet more than anyone really wants to know, probably.

If you are willing to send me your e-mail address in a private message to "[email protected]", we could take any further discussion (if any is needed or desired) "off-line"; that is to say, off the forum.

- Larry