Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!att!cbfsb!cbnewsb.cb.att.com!mbb From: mbb@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (martin.brilliant) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Re: ALED goes to .... (technical questions) Message-ID: <1991Jun16.122436.12392@cbfsb.att.com> Date: 16 Jun 91 12:24:36 GMT References: <19965@csli.Stanford.EDU> Sender: news@cbfsb.att.com Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 44 From article <19965@csli.Stanford.EDU>, by ceb@csli.Stanford.EDU (Charles Buckley): > In article <1991Jun15.124052.17827@cbfsb.att.com>, > mbb@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (martin.brilliant) writes: > ... If we all > knew how Icelandic characters are normally entered .... > > One shouldn't have to know, any more than one should have to know > about the other national keyboard conventions in use around the world. > MSDOS has a facility in it to deal with that, and it need simply be > respected. My wife and I use Microsoft Word 4.0, and we use ALT- to enter extended ASCII (8th-bit) characters. I mention my wife because in the teaching of the history of the English language she needs such characters as barred-d and thorn; I mapped them to extended ASCII characters and programmed Word to draw them on our daisy-wheel printer. ALED supports the same method of entering extended ASCII. The original complaint was that that method was awkward. I looked at support for character sets in other languages in my DOS 3.3 manual, and there is support for some languages, but not Icelandic. I would believe that if that support comes from DOS, ALED would respect it, because it respects the ALT- method. From: wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius) we have: > I don't know how Icelandic characters are entered, but if they're > entered the same way as Finnish characters, there are keys dedicated to > them on the keyboard, just as for the letters A through Z, e.g. > o-with-dots is by the L key, and a-with-a-circle-on-top is by the P key. I would welcome some explanation of how you tell MSDOS (or the editor) that P is to be mapped into a-with-circle-on-top, and how you can get a P (if Finnish uses P, as I think it does). My main question is this - do word processors newer than MS Word provide a form of 8th-bit support that Word 4.0 does not have? Or do versions of MSDOS newer than 3.3 provide a new form of support? If so, what is it? Marty marty@hoqax.att.com hoqax!marty Martin B. Brilliant (Winnertech Corporation)