Re: Special char in box?


21 Jul 95 18:23:03 BST

In article <3uiden$dj7@flood.xnet.com>, mblaheta@flood.xnet.com (Michael Blaheta) writes:
> On 19 Jul 1995 01:57:19 GMT, Jason Dyer (jdyer@indirect.com) said:
>> I want to put an accented letter in an Inform box quote, except it
>> keeps coughing up whenever I try. Can anyone help?
>
> AFAIK you can't. Zcode does not use the ASCII standard to store text,
> it uses a 5 bit character code (as I recall), and so it simply doesn't
> have the elaborate characters available. Just letters, numbers, and
> common (i.e. on the keyboard) symbols.
>
>> Jason Dyer - jdyer@indirect.com
>
> Don Blaheta
> blahedo@quincy.edu
> mblaheta@xnet.com

That's not quite right. The Z-machine supports a form of "escape"
code (which Inform generates automatically) allowing arbitrary ASCII
values to be printed, though exactly what very strange large numbers
produce can be machine-dependent. Also, some interpreters use a
different (e.g. Courier) font for the boxed text, rather than a
variable-pitch font as with the usual text, and this may make accents
go wrong.

Is this character one which is printable outside of a box command,
then?

Graham Nelson