In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jack Campin
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>> I just plop the characters i want in the abc file, like, for example:
>
>>   z D   E | G2  G     G2  F  | E2  E z  F   G | A2   G (FE)   D |  F2 E
>>  w: v-  o   et  por- que jus-  ti- a  t-  en d'el et  de-* rei-  tu-ta,
>
>> I use jcabc2ps to render the file, but any program should be able to 
>> handle this.
>
>Are we to assume there were some non-ASCII characters in there?  My mail
>client didn't show any, which kinda points to the problem with that...
>
>High-bit characters also map onto different things in different systems.
>
>
>:> To use accented letter, type the following:
>:> \`a  => "a with grave" [...]
>:> \~n  => "n with tilde"
>
>It would be far more partable if ABC software used HTML standards
>for this and deprecated TeXisms.  TeX is never going to get wider
>use; HTML/XML/XHTML is where all the development is going on and
>there are far more machines out there with installed software that
>uses it.  And it seems it's increasingly going to be built into
>the OS with Windows (not in itself any bad thing regardless of the
>sleazy politics involved).

Well I can go with that if we must have an alternative.
>
>
>: What's wrong with simply putting the correct accent in the text?
>: They're all part of the extended character set, and pretty much a
>: standard these days.
>
>What standard?  I got an emailed document from a Word for Windows
>user today that had a whole pile of n-tildes in it (hex 96, decimal
>150).  They were presumably typed by that pathetic slave of Satan
>with the intention that they should be some sort of punctuation or
>bullet character, but I've no idea what.

In that case your user probably used a font which is not in your system,
or a version of word later than yours.
>
>Many editors (at least on the Mac) can translate the local character
>set to HTML, so there's no need ever to ship non-portable forms to
>other people who might have different platforms, however convenient
>the type-it-straight-in approach might be for you.

But this avoids the question of what *is* the character set? For the
Americans � (pound!) and Euro are extended characters yet of course for
a European accented characters of all sorts are right there on the
keyboard and are typed into the document! To make a Frenchman type \'a
when it's a key on the keyboard is pretty strange, if not insulting!

... and what's the \?? code for � anyway ....?


Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Author of Music Publisher system
Music Software written by musicians for musicians
http://www.braeburn.co.uk
Selkirk, Scotland

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