ForenSys wrote:
>
> The umlaut y (�) is ANSI CHAR(255). If I'm not mistaken, RBase uses
> CHAR(255) to store a null value. The RBWin RBASE.CFG collation tables use
> the ANSI character set. For some reason, the form is interpreting the null
> value as a text value, hence the umlaut y displayed. (Therefore, changing
> your null value - to ? for example - should not affect the problem).
>
Stephen,
According to my ancient R:Base manual's ASCII table, 255 is supposed to
be "blank", 0 is "null" and 32 is "space" so at first I thought you were
mistaken but I decided to check. I came across an interesting site about
ASCII characters and snipped the following at
http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/win3x.html#altnum. (Robelle produces
QEDIT.)
> DOS and Windows allow you to create Extended Characters such as y-umlaut with the
>help of a numeric code. To
> enter any character from the IBM PC Extended Character (ECS), which is standard on
>DOS, hold down the Alt key
> while you enter the 3-digit decimal code. For example, Alt-152 is y-umlaut in ECS.
>Since HP uses the Roman-8
> Character Set, the Reflection Terminal Emulator for DOS accepts Alt-152, but
>translates the character into decimal
> 239 (what HP expects for the Roman-8 y-umlaut character).
>
> The situation in MS Windows is more complex and the only way to simplify it is to
>get a National Keyboard. To be
> compatible with DOS, you can still use Alt plus a 3-digit ECS code, but only if the
>character exists in the ANSI
> Character Set used by Windows. Windows then converts the character from the ECS code
>to the equivalent ANSI
> code. For example, y-umlaut is entered as Alt-152 but is translated to decimal 255.
>Or you can enter the ANSI code,
> but must convert it to 4-digits by preceding it with a 0 (zero). Thus Alt-0255 is
>also y-umlaut.
I see this substitution of chars. consistently with a set of ASCII text
reports I use which are generated by originally DOS code. When I drag
them into what I expect is an ECS text editor, instead of lines built
from ECS char 196, I get lines of ECS 152, the now notorious y-umlaut.
Nicky
