Re: No TrueType 141?

[Peter Evans peterev@xxxxxxxx]

Sorry for the preambulatory quoteathon:

Me:
>>>> If a [TrueType] font has a character whose
>>>> decimal value is 141, how do I get it?

Robert Holmgren (with admirable patience):
>>> In the factory-issue XW.KBD, you get it by tapping Alt-Ctrl-1-4-1 on the
>>> NumberPad.

Me:
>> No. This should get character 141 of the XyWrite character set. Different
>> beast.

RH (probably gritting his teeth):
>Uh huh. What do you mean, "XyWrite character set"?

The character set that starts off with the 256 characters of the IBM US
code page (437), and goes up to number 900 or thereabouts, including
letters with ogoneks, etc.

>Alt-Ctrl-1-4-1 generates 141d|8Dh. Prove it with any LISTer.

Yes.

>I load WingDings in XyWin, tap Alt-Ctrl-141 (or Alt-Ctrl-Shift-141; these
>are identical assignments in XW.KBD), and I get a bold arrow pointing
>NorthEast. I load WingDings in MSWrite (the editor supplied with Win3.1),
>tap Alt-Shift-141, and I get a bold arrow pointing NorthEast. Identical.
>(If, as you wrote in your initial message, a "normal Windows TrueType font
>has nothing whatever at 8dh", then what is this -- and whence?)

I believe it's character 236 decimal, not 141. I don't have MS Write, and
the most bog-standard Windows text editor I have is the Notepad that comes
as part of Win95. Alt-Shift-digits-on-the-numeric-keypad do(es) nothing.
As Notepad doesn't allow choice of fonts, I'll use WordPerfect instead.
Again, Alt-Shift-Num does nothing. But Alt-Num-0141 gets a black circle
with a white 2 in it. To get that bold NE arrow in WordPerfect, I type
Alt-Num-0236. To get the arrow in XyWin, I type Alt-Ctl-Shift-141. And
how to get the little number 2 in XyWin is what remains a mystery.

>If I load font Times New Roman under MSWrite, tap Alt-Shift-141, I get
>"i-grave". Same character under XyWin. They also print identically to my
>LaserJet.

Interesting. In WordPerfect, and I had thought just about any other
standard Windows program, I'd need to type Alt-Num-0236; in XyWin,
Alt-Ctl-Shift-141.

>(In fact, if I print out all 255 chars in this Times New Roman
>set, I get 255 glyphs, each one unique. So it is *impossible* that any one
>8-bit character, such as 8dh, is omitted from the total set, even if
>codepage is extensively remapping the assignments.)

Hmm, that too is interesting. Quite apart from the first 32 characters, my
font utility says that there are ten or so glyphless characters in Times
New Roman. (But maybe the font utility isn't quite as good as I thought.)

>What does the [boot.description] stanza in SYSTEM.INI say about "codepage"?

Nothing.

>(If there's no codepage definition, then embed  in a XyWin text: what
>does it say?)

437.

>My guess is that you've set PRN up to use a SUbstitution
>table that remaps your characters

I don't think I could have done this even inadvertently: I'm using Windoze
printing.

>What is your codepage, anyway?

In Win-not-Xy? Good question. 850, I suppose. (Isn't it usually 850?) I
don't know how I'd check. (For Win31, I had various utilities that told me
everything.) Windoze own Help facility offers something about "codepages",
but this seems to be about remapping the keyboard. Two thick books I have
here about Windows say nothing, perhaps on the theory that red-blooded
anglophones don't have to worry about funny letters used by funny foreigners.

Anyway, I had thought that the standard way even monoglot anglophones set
up Windows was with a moderately polyglot code page, whereas XyWin (unlike
Signature) had the US code page. The way my system is (poorly?) set up, if
I use XyWin to type in a-grave, a-acute, a-circumflex, a-umlaut, etc., then
save and open the resulting file with most other Windows word processors or
list utilities, I'll see gibberish. If on the other hand I copy and paste
from XyWin elsewhere, all will be OK. Likewise, if I attempt to use
XyWrite for reading plain text (including characters with diacritics)
produced with other Windows programs, I'll get gibberish; whereas if I copy
and past in all will be well. How this works I know not.

OK. If you can print out 255 different Times New Roman glyphs, can you do
pull off the analogous stunt for Wingdings? If so, is a black circle with
a little white two in the middle somewhere among this set of glyphs? And
if so, how do you get this to appear on your screen when you're in XyWrite?

I'm sorry if this message makes me appear thick. I certainly suspect that
I *am* thick. (That it's an hour past my bedtime doesn't help, either.)
Thanks for your continuing patience.