special characters in 3+

[Alison Tartt akt@xxxxxxxx]

I've been given some xywrite 3+ files with special Spanish characters (í,
ó, é, etc.) that are showing up in a DOS editor as A1, A2, A4, 82, etc.
When I open the files within xywrite, the characters display correctly on
screen, but this has never happened before. Usually special characters
display correctly in the DOS editor if they are going to display correctly
in xywrite. These files were created in another program, probably Word for
the Mac, and then translated into xywrite (with what procedure, I don't
know). Once I open the files in xywrite, I can't search on any of these
special characters, so the character "á" obviously isn't the ASCII
character 160.

Can anyone explain what has happened here? I'm a bit worried that after I
edit the files and give them back to the press, there might have problems
down the road during the conversions that take place in production, since
these aren't ASCII characters like the rest of the file. To be on the safe
side, I'd rather replace them with ASCII, but it will be tedious if I can't
rely on search and replace.

If this is a hopelessly elementary issue, please reply off-line.

Thanks,
Alison Tartt