Re: reply to Robert Holmgren on memory problems--special characters

[Robert Hemenway robhem@xxxxxxxx]

Note on Richard Giering's query and Carl diStefano's response on Sat 20
June about umlaut, etc. characters.

*Keyboard.* The simplest soultion for me has been to set up a keyboard
for the standard lowercase diacritic characters--stealing a trick from
Nota Bene. On my Ctrl+Alt kbd, the circumflex characters are on the top
row (1-). umlauts on the 2nd row (Q-), acute accents on the third (A-)
and grave accents on the bottom (Z-). Characters are ranged above and
below the base character: a circumflex is 1, a umlaut is q, a acute is
a, a grave is z. And so on. With n tilde, a tilde, o tilde, c cedilla,
the ae and oe ligatures, the German double s, and the inverted query and
exclamation marks tucked in here and there. That gives the German,
French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese accented characters on screen
and printed out. In XyWrite.

I haven't put the cap diacritics on a KBD, since unaccented caps are
accepted now in most languages. If I want an accented cap I enter the Xy
number with Shift+Alt+numeric keyboard.

*Conversions* Characters other than the standard 128 must of course be
converted to be read by another word processor or in HTML. The XyWrite
conversions to and from HTML pick up nearly all of the standard
diacritics but miss a few--like the a tilde and o tilde of Portuguese,
the oe ligature of French, and many of the cap diacritics. There are
omissions in practically all conversions to and from other word
processors. You can fix the omissions in conversions to Xy, anyhow, with
little SNR programs.

XyWrite has its own number codes for ASCII characters above the standard
128; they're listed in the CHARSET file. Xy has its own code page, in
short, that doesn't correspond to any of the standard pages so far as I
know. This accounts for some (most?) of the garbled texts when you
import files. The garbles can be corrected with a search-and-replace
program. A little monotonous to write, but when it's done it's done, and
if additions crop up in the future thay're easy to insert.

The XyWrite codes in CHARSET work no matter what typeface you're using,
but they may not look quite right unless it's a fairly standard typeface
like Times Roman or Arial or Courier. The character range is huge, but
there are troublesome omissions that were never corrected by Bitstream.

*XyWin Upper Codes for ASCII 850 code page*

In ASCII 850 order--a file copied from XyWin. Those with an asterisk
don't convert to HTML in the XyWrite conversion. (A few convert only to
the HTML code.) Quite a few don't convert on my screen in Netscape
Navigator--I've entered a "--" in the blanks--but I can put the missing
character on screen by entering the PS number with Alt+0165, etc. The
missing ones very rarely appear in most files. Nearly all of the common
letters with diacritics are here, and convert nicely between Xy and HTML

(Wonder how this XyWin file is converted in moving on and off the
Clipboard.)

ASCII	XyWin		Character Name

134	391	?	Dagger*	
135	392	?	Double dagger*	
138	344	?	S caron*	
139	262	?	Left single guillemet*	
140	659	?	OE*	
145	266	?	Left single quote*	
146	267	?	Right single quote*	
147	264	?	Left double quote*	
148	265	?	Right double quote*	
150	259	?	En dash* –	
151	260	?	Em dash* &mdash	
154	349	?	s caron	
155	263	?	Right single guillemet	
156	660	?	oe	
161	173	¡	Exclamation point inv	
163	156	£	Pound 	
165	190	--	Yen	
166	221	--	Broken bar	
167	245	--	Section	
169	184	--	Copyright	
171	174	«	Left double guillemet	
172	170	¬	Logical not	
173	240	--	Hyphen	
174	169	--	Registered	
175	238	¯
176	248	°	Degree* &degree;	
177	241	±	Plus or minus	
182	244	--	Paragraph	
183	250	·	Middle dot	
184	247	--	Cedilla	
187	175	»	Right double guillemet	
188	172	¼	One-quarter	
189	171	½	One-half	
190	243	--	Three-quarters	
191	168	¿	Question mark, inv	
192	183	--	A grave	
193	181	--	A acute	
194	182	--	A circumflex	
195	199	--	A tilde	
196	142	Ä	A umlaut	
197	143	Å	A overcircle	
198	146	Æ	AE diphthong	
199	128	Ç	C Cedilla	
200	212	--	E grave	
201	144	É	E acute	
202	210	--	E circumflex	
203	211	--	E umlaut	
204	222	--	I grave	
205	214	--	I acute	
206	215	--	I circumflex	
207	216	--	I umlaut	
209	165	Ñ	N tilde	
210	227	--	O grave	
211	224	--	O acute	
212	226	--	O circumflex	
213	229	--	O tilde	
214	153	Ö	O umlaut	
215	158	--	Multiply	
216	157	¥	O slash	 (yen, an error on my screen)
217	235	--	U grave	
218	233	--	U acute	
219	234	--	U circumflex	
220	154	Ü	U umlaut	
223	225	ß	German double s 	
224	133	à	a grave	
225	160	á	a acute	
226	131	â	a circumflex	
227	198	--	a tilde	
228	132	ä	a umlaut	
229	134	å	a overcircle	
230	145	æ	ae diphthong	
231	135	ç	c cedilla	
232	138	è	e grave	
233	130	é	e acute	
234	136	ê	e circumflex	
235	137	ë	e umlaut	
236	141	ì	i grave	
237	161	í	i acute	
238	140	î	i circumflex	
239	139	ï	i umlaut	
241	164	ñ	n tilde	
242	149	ò	o grave	
243	162	ó	o acute	
244	147	ô	o circumflex	
245	228	--	o tilde	
246	148	ö	o umlaut	
247	246	÷	Divide sign	
248	155	¢	o slash	(cent, an error on my screen)
249	151	ù	u grave	
250	163	ú	u acute	
251	150	û	u circumflex	
252	129	ü	u umlaut	
253	236	--	y acute	
255	152	ÿ	y umlaut	

A long message. Hope it transmits and that it's of some use.

Robert Hemenway