Macrons in Xywrite

["Norman Havens, Fujino-machi, JAPAN" nhavens@xxxxxxxx]

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FROM: Norman Havens, Fujino & Tokyo, Japan   DATE: Feb 3, 1995
SUBJECT: Macrons using XyWrite and HPIIIp
 NATHAN SIVIN>> It is impossible to prepare camera copy on Japan
with
NATHAN SIVIN>> XYDOS, which does not provide macrons over o and
u.  NATHAN SIVIN>> The HP Laserjet character sets do not support
them NATHAN SIVIN>> either, which suggests remarkable naivete.
 I'm embarrassed to say that I have XyWrite 4, Orbis, and Ibid,
but I've been too busy to get around to really using them; for
my work, I still use XyWrite 3.85, with a HPIIIp printer, and
depending on the font involved, I find it's possible to print
acceptable macrons by using HPL's command language to move a
*hyphen* back and up over the character.
 Against the chance you or someone else might be interested,
it's a pretty simple method:
 First, as an onscreen marker, I use circumflex-o (ASC 147) and
circumflex-u (ASC 150) at all occasions of small-case macrons
(if you need to use the circumflex characters elsewhere, you can
use some other display character not needed for printing; for
large case macrons, I use umlaut O and U [ASC 153 and 154]).
 In my printer files, I place the following commands in the
substitution tables:
 ?$@??(J=o?$@??(J08-17Y-+17Y ?$@??(J=u?$@??(J08-17Y-+17Y
 The non-display ASCII characters in the above strings probably
didn't make it through the Internet, so here's the strings
again, with the non-displaying characters in brackets as in [ASC
8] for ASCII 8, and [ESC] for Escape:
 [ASC 147]=o[ASC 8][ESC]*p-17Y-[ESC]*p+17Y
[ASC 150]=u[ASC 8][ESC]*p-17Y-[ESC]*p+17Y
 Note: onscreen, the [Escape] characters appear like ASC 16, but
 they're actually input in XyWrite by pressing the ESC key.

 Each time the printer comes across one of the circumflex
display characters, it prints the appropriate real (o or u),
then backspaces (ASC 8) the hyphen, while raising it up by 17
units (-17Y); after printing, the hyphen is returned to its
normal height by the +17Y command (for large case O and U, I use
values of +/-30).
 I've played around with some other combinations of heights,
characters, and commands, and if you don't like the position of
the hyphen over italics, it should be possible to increment the
position on the X axis by using the -X and +X command; but I
still find the above method easiest to implement, and basically
satisfactory for my purposes.
  One other possible drawback is that on some proportional
fonts, you may feel the macron is too short. In that case, you
might try using the same basic technique but with the underline
(ASC 95) or long dash (ASC 196), but the results will depend on
the font used. More display characters are also available with
different screen pages and font sets.
 If I had more time I'd like to play around with the HPL
language to draw a more proper macron; it shouldn't be that
difficult, though it's a bit beyond me right now.

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