Re: DOS v Win encoding

[Wolfgang Bechstein bechstein@xxxxxxxx]

"Robert Holmgren"  wrote:

> Now, can you tell me what exactly it is that you want to
> do with texts, and with Clip? You are using XyWrite IV,
> correct?

Correct.

> You are using it mainly in CodePage 850 (or 437), correct?

437 only.

> You want to go from Xy4 to UTF-16, and stay there?

Yes, or possibly go to UTF-8 (because I think UTF-8 can be handled by
the applications I am targeting; see below).

> And you want to convert back from UTF-16 to 850/437?

Yes.

> Because although Clip is designed mainly to translate between
> two SBCS (single-byte characters sets), internally Clip
> translates to and from Unicode (DBCS and even higher, because
> single-byte sources would never go any higher than double-byte
> but Clip is now capable of translating the extended Speedo set,
> and that requires up to 4 bytes per character).

Being able to convert from and to the entire Speedo set certainly would
be a plus, but I mainly need the German umlauts and other accented
characters, plus some Greek characters and math symbols.

> The latest version of Clip (which is experimental, aimed mainly
> at translating from Xy4 to NBWin, and unfinished, although I use
> it every day) can output the DBCS UTF-16 string to a file. The
> thing is, only specialized applications can do anything with
> UTF-16 texts. You can encode it for a browser, which is a
> different matter; but the raw stuff is too hot for most apps to
> handle. You are sure that you have appropriate apps?

I am not sure, and I guess the best way to find out would be to give it
a whirl. My target apps are the Japanese version of MS Office 2000 (Word,
Excel, and Powerpoint) and a Japanese mail client called Becky (which
definitely can handle UTF-8, dunno about UTF-16).

Yoroshiku! (Japanese for "hat in hand")

Wolfgang Bechstein