Re: Xy4 problem

[Robert Holmgren holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to note from Phil Smith  Sun, 18 May 1997

> Yes, a nul appears as an 'a' in a file. And yes, MW = 0. Not
> entirely sure I understand the connection between the two.

There isn't any. They're different phenomena. I was trying to understand
which behavior you're describing. I'm still unclear. You say:

> I tried setting MW = 1 and re-invoking, and got my 'a's again.

You mean, got them again after they disappeared with MW=0, or do you mean
that your default is MW=0 but that the value of MW makes no apparent
difference?

> I get the 'a's also after loading a file.

That suggests that what you're seeing is the character in the left border
of your window box. You mean, the file is on-screen, but column zero
simultaneously displays a column of "a"s -- to the left of the file's text?
Where the border of the window used to be? In this case, check out
VAriable WB (command "va/nv $WB"). Is "a" the sixth element of VA$WB? If
it is, change WB to something you like better, e.g. a space character,
during initialization (SETTINGS.DFL or STARTUP.INT). Ascii-179 is the
factory-issue left box border.

Or do you mean that the "a"s appear after the text ends, at the left end of
empty lines? If the latter, then the probable explanation for different
appearance under DOS 6.0 and Win95-DOS is that these OS's are using
different IBM text mode screen fonts. Your screen font shows an "a" for
nul. Load a different screen font! Get a utility like Michael Mefford's
shareware FONTED.ZIP, and save the font that you like under DOS 6.0; FONTED
will turn it into a .COM file that you can just call from STARTUP.INT or
AUTOEXEC.BAT, which will replace Win95's screen font with the font you
like. I have several dozen screen fonts that I typographed myself,
each of which I install (one at a time) simply by running a COM file.
Works like a charm under Win95.



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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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