RE: how to map the tilde ~ key

[Dorothy Day DAY@xxxxxxxx]

Father Bucko writes:

>I cannot type a tilde with my keyboard (key 41 I believe). I tried going
>into the file and using ascii number 126 with the control and alt keys
>down-- this prints a tilde such that 41=~ but the keyboard still does not
>produce the required character.
> >Can you please give me instructions for how to properly replace the
>commands in my keyboard file so that I can use the tilde key-- I need it in
>writing html pages.

I haven't looked into this in XyWrite, but Nota Bene (which uses
more characters in multiple ways), treats the tilde character as
either a printing tilde (what you want) or a conditional hyphen.
I'm fairly sure this is directly from the original XyWrite
editor.

The ascii 126 character, when it occurs in a file, is treated by
the program as an indicator for the latter purpose. When you
type Shift-tilde to get the printing tilde, Nb inserts a
multiple-byte character into the file. The sequence is Ascii 255
(a "blank FF") plus the hex value of the character, in this case
7E.

The implication for your HTML editing is that a XyW file with
"hard" tildes typed in will actually contain a lot of those
blank FF plus 7E combinations, when read by another editor.

One solution is to edit in expanded mode and always insert "soft"
(conditional) hyphens where you need them for HTML. Or, before
storing an HTML file with printing tildes, do a global change
(in expanded mode) of all occurrences of |Ascii 255 7E| to
|Ascii 126|. (On the command line, the Ascii 255 will look like
a bland space, followed by the 7E.)

Dorothy Day, Indiana University SLIS
Bitnet: DAY@IUBACS
Internet: day@xxxxxxxx