Re: converting XyWrite 4.017 diacriticals

[Leslie Bialler lb136@xxxxxxxx]

Tom Roche wrote:
>
> Hello:
>
> Has anyone had experience converting XyWrite 4.017 characters with
> diacriticals? I need to get several XyWrite 4.017 files into either XyWrite
> 3+ or WP5.1 for DOS, but have found that almost all special characters
> are converted to strings of smiley faces, boxes, exclamation points,
> triangles, etc. Affected characters include a grave, e grave, a circumflex,
> o circumflex, a umlaut, e umlaut,

I cannot imagine why these do not convert. These are "standard issue" ASCII
characters.

> the ascii character for an em dash (260),

Ah, but this is not. ASCII > 254 does not convert to other programs.

> and others. All possible methods of converting to WP5.1 or XyWrite 3+
> seem to produce the same result, including Word for Word and XyWin
> 4.12 (the characters look normal in XyWin).

Well, yes they would. XyWin 4.12 uses the same set as XyWrite 4.017.

> The author of the files is not
> easily accessible to us, and we don't have XyWrite 4.017.
> I take it you have only XyWin?

> Could XyWrite 4.017 convert the files and preserve the special
> characters? If not, is there any other way?
> To the best of my knowledge, there is none. I'd love to know of one, so I
sure hope somebody else on this list does know. 6-5 and pickem one of the
XyWizards does.

> I would appreciate any suggestions for working aroud this problem. I
> could make a master document or rig up a search-and-replace macro to
> run on the converted files, but since the manuscript is so large (over
> 1,000 pages) and I'm not really sure what characters are in it (French,
> German, transliterated Greek, etc.), this would only be a partial solution.
> Also, this would work only if each character produces a distinct string of
> gibberish, but, in an recent (abortive) attempt to convert files from
> Notabene 4.2, we got the same string from different characters (eastern
> European, in that case).
> Hmm and hmmm . . . Very Eenteresting. This is no doubt because, as another
thread was indicated, Note Bene has until now still been largely based on
classic old 3.57.

> Thanks in advance,
>

No prob. Just wish I had better news.


--
Leslie Bialler
Columbia University Press
lb136@xxxxxxxx