The Alt key sequence was also available on my
original Acorn computer more than ten years old.
It had its own RISC operating system. The only
difference to MS was:
The leading zero was not needed. Trust MS to
make it more complex........
Max.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jallan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 6:08 AM
Subject: [users] Re: How do I insert an em dash,
G. Roderick Singleton wrote:
As using Alt sequences, can someone please confirm that this is
available on _ALL_ the OSes we support or is it a Windows only feature.
If it is general then the doc can be updated. With respect to the
manual, I agree this subject is better covered by the document I
mentioned above rather than add bloat.
Getting characters by Alt with numbers on the numeric keypad with Num
Lock engaged is indeed a feature specific to Windows, or a least it used
to be. (I do not know *for certain* that it has not been implemented on
some other OS's or shells recently, but I doubt it.)
The Alt key method translate the number entered into the corresponding
character in the current Windows 8-bit character set. In most, if not
all, Latin character sets, the en-dash is 0510 and the em-dash is 0151.
(The initial 0 is necessary, otherwise what is returned is the character
in the current DOS character set.) However this particular placement of
em-dash and en-dash is a feature only found in Windows own proprietary
code pages and does not work for code pages which do not have en-dash
and em-dash in those positions.
Beginning with Window 2000, the system was extended to allow Unicode
characters above 0255 to be obtained in the same way. Accordingly we can
translate the Unicode hex values for the dashes, U+2013 and U+2014 to
08210 and 08211, type them on the numeric key pad while holding down the
Alt key, and get en-dash and em-dash regardless of what the Windows
8-bit character set is.
This method works in MS programs (for example NotePad and Wordpad, MS
Office) and in some third party programs.
But it doesn't work in OpenOffice at all.
Instead one gets various characters from the 8-bit Windows character set
(as also in other 3rd party programs I am familiar with). It appears
that only the final byte of the value is getting through.
This probably counts as a bug ... if OpenOffice doesn't support the Alt
method of obtaining Unicode characters, it should return nothing (or an
error dialogue box), not return an incorrect character.
Jallan
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