Re: TYP and XY3

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Paul Breeze  on Mon, 31
Jan 2005 13:21:46 GMT


> Thanks. I have some work finish and then I will try it
> out towards the end of this week and let you know the
> results.

OK. Although actually I already know the result(s)! It works -- the program
(TYP.PM), that is. But the PRN (POSTGST3.PRN) is defective in one high-order
char area (I forgot that it needed additional work -- wrote it a month ago --
*all* the line drawing chars will bomb under 3+, moreover they will crash the
PS interpreter if you include them in your document). I need to polish that up
-- for now, I'd stick with 7 bit chars (32-127).

The fact is that the entire high order char area (>127) lacks any point of
view. So to Paul, and to anyone else who wants this, I put the question, what
charset do you want to map? Neither 437 nor 850 can be completely mapped
(exactly how incomplete, I won't know until I dig into it). But we now have a
bunch of 850 desktop window fonts. 1252 (Windows ANSI) can be be mapped 100%
(or close to it) -- that's what you see if you use Xy3+ in a Desktop window
with Lucida. These Type 1 fonts have a _lot_ of potential chars in them, but
they don't include the silly boxes and parallel lines and drawing chars that
are common in 437/850 -- I suggest that you look at one of the PS fonts in the
Character Map utility, or in Adobe Type Manager, or any program capable of
displaying all the chars in a font. However, Xy3+ is *designed* to display 437
(a pathetic charset by any definition). You can work around that -- change the
characters displayed -- by loading a different VGA or window font. I don't
know if you've ever done that, or know what it looks like, or understand the
ramifications -- but...

What do you want to do? I don't use Xy3, and several people wrote to say that
they wanted this capability to print to a USB printer -- so you all should
reach a consensus, because I don't want to make this PRN twice (it has to be
coded by hand, and that is work).

I'm sort of surprised that nobody has pointed out that the Xy4 PRN doesn't
follow _any_ charset -- just crams in as many chars as it can, helter skelter.
All this is stupid, and needs to be regularized, one way or another. (My own
inclination would be to go to 1252, and the hell with the consequences, because
that at least exploits these lovely fonts. And 1252 is what M$ has defined as
the future. That train is pulling out of the station very very slowly, maybe
intentionally, so that anyone can hop on -- but eventually it'll be gone.)

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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