Re: XYWRITE digest 1296 - Accent Marks

[Bill Mallon bmallon@xxxxxxxx]

RE Accent Marks-
My primary reason for using XyWrite is working on Olympic statistics, a job
I do for the IOC (International Olympic Committee). It entails having to
enter many names in various foreign languages, with their myriad
accents. I'm able to make basically any foreign character print correctly
although it is not WYSIWYG on the screen display. This includes making
macrons and breves. I set up my printer and keyboard files to do this in
the late 80s and it has worked perfectly ever since. It should be
mentioned that this is still XyW3 for DOS (3.52). I never XyW for Windows
and I never got XyW4.
I am attaching an example of a section from the printer file called
Accents.txt that shows how I have set up the substitution tables in the
printer files. The most important thing is that I change the standard
XyWrite printer file to 3LJ3-7J.PRN. I chose this because it has the most
flexibility in terms of characters for foreign accent marks. All of the
accent marks are listed as individual characters - acutes, graves, macrons,
haceks, circumflexes, umlauts, Hungarian double quotes, Romanian underline
commas, etc.
As an example, to print out a capital Z with a hacek (small v - like a
reverse circumflex) over it, the code in the Substitution Table looks like
this.

Yen sign = Z*p-9Yp+9Y
The above characters within <> are ASCII characters entered that I can't
display correctly here in Eudora on e-mail. alt-shift 008 is a backspace,
alt-shift 016 with *p-9Y raises the printer the correct height above the
character. alt-shift 245 is the hacek character in 3LJ3-7J.PRN, and then
alt-shift with *p+9Y brings the printer back down to the baseline.
In my screen display this character looks like a Yen sign, but it prints
perfectly as a Z with a hacek over it.

Similarly, the i with a macron looks like the following:

 = 
Here AS141 displays as i with a grave accent - it is ASCII 141. AS254
displays as a small box, but in 3LJ3-7J.PRN it is an "empty" i - it has no
dot over it. AS008 is a backspace for the printer to make it overwrite the
"empty" i, and AS250 displays as a centered dot, but prints as the macron
over the i.
It all works very well but it took me a long time to get everything to work
- mainly by trial and error. I considered it the greatest test I had ever
made of XyWrite's amazing flexibility. It also takes a while to change the
KBD and PRN files, as these changes (similar to what you in SU:FRGN12) must
be made in every substitution table, so I can change fonts. Also in the
width table, I had to add the correct widths for each accented character to
make the kerning correct as well.
It's a lot of work but for almost 15 years it has served well and gets
accented characters printed correctly every time. The biggest problem is
the lack of WYSIWYG, but by now my eye has adjusted and I know that a
displayed Greek Sigma (for example) will print as a capital S with a hacek
over it.
In the keyboard files I have set up single key combinations to allow me to
enter these, mainly using CTRL+ALT as my entry key. As examples, CTRL+ALT
s displays as an Greek omega, but prints an s with a hacek over
it. CTRL+ALT+SHIFT S displays as a Greek sigma, but prints an S with a
hacek over it.
I would be happy to send anyone interested in this my entire KBD and PRN
files for their perusal - surely you modify them. There are a lot of other
extraneous codes where I've entered single-key entries for XPL macros.


Bill
SU:FRGN12
=Oÿ08*p-9Y÷*p+9Y
=aÿ08ô
=uÿ08ú
=sÿ08ð
;;@=aÿ08ö
?=aÿ08ò
¦=aÿ08ú
?=aÿ08ó
?=aÿ08ø
?=â
 =aÿ08ð
?=aÿ08ñ
?=Aÿ08*p-9Yð*p+9Y
?=aÿ08ø
?=Aÿ08*p-9Yø*p+9Y
?=ã
?=cÿ08û
?=Cÿ08û
?=eÿ08ò
?=eÿ08ð
?=eÿ08ó
?=eÿ08ñ
?=Eÿ08*p-9Yð*p+9Y
?=þÿ08ò
?=þÿ08ó
¡=þÿ08ð
?=þÿ08ú
¤=nÿ08ô
¥=Sÿ08ü
?=oÿ08ò
?=oÿ08ó
¢=oÿ08ð
?=oÿ08ô
§=oÿ08ö
?=Oÿ08*p-9Yó*p+9Y
?=uÿ08ó
£=uÿ08ð
?=uÿ08ò
?=Uÿ08*p-9Yó*p+9Y
?=uÿ08õ
?=yÿ08ð
?=cÿ08õ
?=é
?=Zÿ08*p-9Yõ*p+9Y
?=Rÿ08*p-9Yõ*p+9Y
?=eÿ08ù
¨=Cÿ08*p-9Yõ*p+9Y
ë=ä
à=aÿ08ü
á=ß
â=rÿ08õ
ã=oÿ08÷
ä=Sÿ08*p-9Yõ*p+9Y
å=cÿ08ð
æ=uÿ08÷
ç=tÿ08ü
è=ì
é=å
ê=sÿ08õ
ì=eÿ08õ
í=í
ï=uÿ08ø
ð=eÿ08ú
ñ=zÿ08ú
ò=Zÿ08*p-9Yù*p+9Y
ó=zÿ08õ
ô=Sÿ08*p-9Yð*p+9Y
õ=è
ö=zÿ08ù
÷=sÿ08ü
û=zÿ08ð
ü=nÿ08ð
«=È
¬=Ç
­=É
Ó=°
½=±
¹=¡
=¢
Â=£
Ø=¤
Ê=¥
Ë=¦
Ì=§
=Cÿ08*p-9Yð*p+9Y
=nÿ08õ
=nÿ08ú
ú=ÿ20
=eÿ08ü
¿=tÿ08*p-6Yõ*p+6Y
ET