PostScript substitutions

[Phil Smith phil@xxxxxxxx]

Has anyone out there had experience with substitutions in a PostScript .PRN
file not working? Here is my problem (in Xy4 4.011):

I am trying to print an em-dash, a character which is available in
PostScript but not normally available on the keyboard (in the standard
ASCII 96-character set). So I enter some character, in this case the
'equivalent' symbol, decimal 240, in my text file. In the .PRN file I go
down to the SUBSTITUTION TABLES and make a new entry like:

*=\320

where I have used the asterisk to represent the (240) character and \320 is
the PostScript value of the em-dash in the font I am printing.

Now, what happens is that instead of \320 in the FO.TMP file I get \176,
which is apparently Xy4's default for an unknown character. It prints as a
wiggle (an 'ASCII tilde' which is not high enough to go over a character).
This happens with some other characters which I treat this way.

I have gotten around it by using instead of (240) some other character, in
this case (202), which doesn't look a think like a dash (240 has the virtue
of sort of looking like a hyphen or em-dash). By entering a line in the
.PRN file like the above, only with (202) instead of (240), I get my em-dash.

Does anyone have an answer as to WHY this is happening? It obviously isn't
serious, since one can work around it, but it is a nuisance. And I am curious.

Cheers!

Phil Smith