character encoding

["C.Caballero" Carlo.Caballero@xxxxxxxx]

Colleagues,
I wonder if someone could put me on the right track to a conversion tool I
can use on my Mac. I admit that I no longer use XyWrite, though I don't
rule out a return to it, as it remains superior to all other word
processors.
A lot of my legacy texts in XyWrite are in French and German. It is easy
to force a XyWrite file open in Pages (iWork) by giving it the suffix
.txt. However,a consistent pattern of misrepresentations of upper ASCII
characters then occurs. For instance,
what should be e-accent aigu appears as capital C cedilla
what should be e-accent grave appears as a-umlaut
...and so on (I've avoided showing the characters but instead describe
them)
The originals were ASCII (XyWrite III+ files). But what is the
representation I should aim to convert to in Pages to preserve the
originally intended characters? Is there a converter that can automate
this character conversion for me now that I no longer run XyWrite? I do
not care about converting formatting, just the characters.

Thank you for any help.
Carlo


Carlo Caballero

Associate Professor
Erma Mantey Faculty Fellow
Chairman, Musicology Area

University of Colorado
College of Music, 301 UCB
18th & Euclid
Boulder CO 80309-0301

thyrsus@xxxxxxxx