ANSIfied XyWrite

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

The irony is, that amid a discussion of threads, we have somehow
wandered from the original idea (ANSIfied XyWrite) into
diacritics, with a real risk that people will think Accents have
something to do with ANSI.

I want to describe "ANSIfied XyWrite", because several users have
asked me to clarify the purpose of this creature. Apparently
Manuel and I have conveyed the impression that it is an
"international version" of XyWrite -- whereas in fact it is
simply a different character set, with the greatest number of
differences occurring at the high end of the set, above character
127 (the 8-bit part of the 256 character set, where accented
characters are found).

Documents written with the ANSI character set display incorrectly
on an ordinary XyWrite installation. ANSI documents include:

-- every text document intended for, or acquired from, the
  Internet (HTML)
-- documents ordinarily displayed by Web browsers
-- Microsoft Word documents
-- database documents, e.g. Ventura
-- ...many many many others, everyone has encountered them

Our implementation of ANSIfied XyWrite has three components:
-- ANSI screen fonts, both third party and native to various
  Operating Systems. VDMs tested: Win32 (9x and NT+) and
  OS/2, full screen VGA and windowed "DOS box"
-- ANSI SUbstitution tables for PRiNter files
  Two SUb tables were prepared, for Speedos and for interpreted
  Postscript. They were nominally implemented in two PRiNter
  files, intended to serve as templates for other PRN files:
  HPL4ANSI.PRN, using PCL for H-P LJ4; and POSTHP4A.PRN for
  the H-P LJ4, with additional modifications to the PS prolog)
-- ANSI replacements for native XyWrite functions S1-S7, plus
  "S8" which outputs miscellaneous special ANSI characters
  not contemplated in standard XyWrite. These replacement
  "pseudo-functions" are U2 frames, incorporated in the v114+
  distribution of XyWWWeb.U2. They are activated via minor
  mods to the KeyBoarD file. _NOTE_ that the ACCENTS files
  discussed recently within this thread are *not* ANSIfied
  (although they easily could be); we simply adapted the
  native S1-S7 habit (Manuel's habit) to ANSI purposes, as
  a means of generating high-order characters

If you intend to edit or write ANSI documents, you might find it
handy (as I do) to have two separate invocations of XyWrite
running simultaneously -- one ANSIfied, the other normal.

To run ANSIfied XyWrite, a user must establish _separate_ ANSI
KeyBoarD and PRiNter files, as well as a separate INiTialization
file to load them (and perhaps wrap everything in a BAT or CMD
file that installs ANSI screen fonts and then launches XyWrite).

Installation is described more fully in XyWWWeb.INF (U2 v114+):
 Command "HELP ANSI"
All users will need to download at least one file (ANSI1252.ZIP
-- see link in the Help frame) and, of course, to be running U2
v114+.

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