High-ASCII characters (was: Reply to Robert Holmgren ...)

[Eric Van Tassel 101233.342@xxxxxxxx]

Just a few comments.

Like Mr Hemenway, I put into my KBD file the higher-ASCII chars. that I use
often. But -- being unwilling to lose all the other uses to which I might
put ALT+__, ALT+SHFT+__, etc., I created two new "tables" in the KBD file
and assigned F11 and F12 to them. (This doesn't interfere with using (e.g.)
F11 to open a single delta, or F12 to recall from the stack.)

(I do have to remember to cancel CapsLock if it's been on, as I haven't
bothered to duplicate the F11 and F12 tables as F11+CAPS etc. And I don't
think I should, anyway: I seem to remember encountering, a long time ago,
an upper limit to the number of extra tables you could add to a KBD file.)

I can't resist boasting that I invented the Nota Bene pattern (umlauts on
the 2nd line, acutes on the third etc.) independently of NB. Unlike Mr
Hemenway, I want certain cap. accented letters available too -- hence F12
as well as F11. For a+umlaut, I hold down F11 and hit q; for A+umlaut, I
hold down F12 and hit q.

I also use F11 & F12 for odd sorts that I use frequently -- paragraph
symbol, dagger & double dagger, checkmark, "section" sign. So far as
possible, I assigned these to mnemonically feasible keys (e.g. dagger to
F11+t because it looks sorta like a "t"; then double dagger to F12+t
because it's kinda a cap dagger, isn't it?).

I too have a program that converts anything <32 and >128 into codes. (I
devised my own codes for this purpose, though I believe I cribbed a lot
from Princeton U.P.'s system.) As I think I mentioned recently, to simplify
sending copy to journals etc., my program notices whenever it's made a
particular global conversion, jumps to the top of the file, and adds a line
saying (e.g.)
    ;au = a+umlaut
This way I've notified the recipient in plain-ASCII of any codes in the
file, without wasting time & space appending the complete list including
codes that *don't* appear in this particular file.

I change my codes from time to time -- I've used ;au and  and probably
have had others -- and I guess I can adapt to the HTML set; though it seems
a dreadful kludge. Probably, however, someone can tell me why these strings
had to be so long.

Incidentally, I've found it very convenient to keep another macro on hand
that UNconverts <32 and >128 characters. When I've written something and
run ACC-OUT.PM, sure as eggs I'll think of a clever insertion involving
diacritics, and rather than try to remember the codes I just run ACC-IN.PM,
make the changes, and run ACC-OUT.PM again.

I also have a macro called DESTROY.PM, which deletes all characters
*between* ASCII 32 and 128. (As the name implies, this is best run on a
dummy copy of the coded file :-) The residue shows if I've inadvertently
used any characters that might give the recipient trouble; in which case,
another macro reopens the original (coded) file and searches out each
instance of the offending character(s).

Cheers
Eric Van Tassel


PS: Of course, when I (starting from Compuserve Mosaic and using Windows
"File...Save as") saved Mr Hemenway's list of characters as a XyWrite file,
all the high-ASCIIs got garbled. But they did come across as far as Mosaic,
which often doesn't happen when I get e-mails from the rest of the world.
Go figure.