Re: Xy & Ansi

[nsivin@xxxxxxxx (Nathan Sivin)]

I quite agree with you, Guido, about ANSI characters. After using XYDos with a
Deskjet, quite satisfactorily, for a couple of years, I now find that
typographer's quotation marks aren't a simple matter with the Laserjet 4+.
They are OK for the 3 XyWrite font families (Dutch, Swiss, Courier), none of
which I happen to use for anything of consequence. They work because XY uses a
proprietary symbol set (23Z).

For the Laserjet's built-on fonts, most of the characters above 255 don't work
with standard symbol sets (ANSI, 10U, etc.). I can't standardize on ANY symbol
set for single AND double quotes (real ones, since the Deskjet's fake ones
don't work on a Laserjet) in all fonts. The best I can do is switch to the
oddball set 7J, fake double quotes with pairs of singles, and then switch back
to my regular symbol set. That's a miserable kludge, and I hope XY will do
something about it without waiting for a major release.

-- Nathan Sivin
History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA 19104-3325