

         The Care and Feeding of Foreign Characters

		Copyright 1991 by Alex Gross


     Accessing, displaying, and printing foreign characters

on a computer can become a vast subject, but I will attempt

to keep it within bounds.  There are two main reasons why

this field is so complex.  First, each of us would naturally

like to summon up almost any character at will in any size on

any kind of monitor, as though the computer could read our

mind.  And we'd also like to print it in any style or color

on any printer, as though here too the printer could know

exactly what we wanted.  At least that's what many people

would claim they want.  But second and more important, the

hackers who cobbled the first computers together had no way

of sharing this breadth of desire.  They were happy that the

machines worked at all, and they never really foresaw how

commonplace computers might become.  They improvised their

terminology as they went along, borrowing electronic terms

from punchcard operators and telephone jargon from radio

hams.  It was assumed that the only language anyone would

ever want to use on a computer was this weird form of

English, though only in capital letters (and even English was

an afterthought to numbers).  This

necessarily meant that accents, cedillas, and cute little

Polish "l's" with tails only got put in as a highly

improvised afterthought in various inconsistent ways.

     

     And this is one reason why there are so many ways of

generating foreign characters today.  What follows are

numerous devices--though by no means all of them--to coax

diacritics from your keyboard.  Keep in mind, as we said last

month with Cyrillic, that there are trade-offs involved in

most of these solutions.  The one you choose will vary

according to your time, knowledge, curiosity and resources.

Each method has advantages and drawbacks.

     

     1)  Get a Mac.  As noted before, this machine is well

equipped to handle all kinds of graphic characters, including

accents.  Drawback: you won't have an IBM compatible PC.

We'll try to discuss this a bit later without getting drawn

into polemics.  The following examples assume you are still

IBM- or clone-bound.

     

     2)  The WordPerfect Solution.  This approach, fairly

close to ideal provided you already use WordPerfect, is also

a good argument for choosing it as your first word processor.

You can either use the Format-Other-Language command, which

will allow you to print (but not view on screen) most

accented characters, or you

can send off for WP's Foreign Language Modules, which come in

twenty-one different languages.  These include both Canadian

and continental French, Swiss and orthodox German, Brazilian

and Iberian Portuguese, and-three-count them--versions of

English: American, British, and Australian!  Drawback: none,

unless you happen to be wedded to another word processor.

(NOTE: reviews of the French and Spanish modules are still

upcoming). (1)

     

     And now come the other IBM-based strategies:

     

     3)  The DOS Formula.  The mother of all solutions, but

not for the faint of heart.  You will have to open your DOS

manual and read about not one but four relatively obscure

commands: Country, Code Page, Keyboard, and Mode.  These will

have an impact on two of your computer's most sacred centers,

its CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.  I will not quote all

the rules here--they are too long, and besides all of our DOS

Manuals are different.  But if you (or a more technical

friend) can handle this, then most of your accent problems

should be behind you.  Drawbacks: the relative complexity of

the process, but also its near-finality: you can only use one

language at a time, and you will have to be or become adept

at the full foreign keyboard, with its AZERTY for QWERTY in

French and the reversal of "z" and "y"

in German.  But once you have mastered this, it is behind you

and really works.  You will also be able to keep separate

files for two or more languages, so you can switch between

them.

     

     4)  The ASCII Dodge.  This is a retail solution, useful

for small quantities of text, provided you are working in

straight ASCII mode or using an ASCII-based word processor.

In this realm each of the common accented letters is produced

by pressing the ALT key plus a specific number.  Thus, ALT

plus 136 give you a lower-case "e" with a circumflex.  ASCII

tables are widespread in the computer literature, and pop-up

table programs showing the full ASCII "set" on screen can be

found in the screen or print utility file libraries of most

bulletin boards.  Drawbacks: this technique's slowness and

clumsiness of use is the lesser complaint.  The main problems

involve not only making sure your printer can handle these

characters (alas, no substitute here for hands-on work over

your printer manual) but also transferring these characters

correctly in and out of ASCII and various word processor

formats, which are not identical.  For instance, older

versions of MicroSoft Word assign a different character to

ALT plus 136.  Michelle Battaglia provided a relatively

simple two-step search-and-replace solution at a recent NY

Circle meeting: search for all your circumflexed "e's" and

replace them with a unique code in Word Processor A, such as

"e6," then convert to ASCII.  Pour the ASCII file into word 

processor B and then search out all instances of "e6:" globally 

replace them with the correct form for circumflexed "e."

     

     5)  COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS:  Here we come back to Fancy

Font (or Fancy Word), which I mentioned last month.  It will

provide disks for French, Spanish, Greek, Russian, and a

generic "Germanic," as well as some weirder alphabets. (2)

But you still won't see accents on the screen.  Typical font

sizes for the French and Spanish are 12, 14, 16, and 18

points in regular, italic, and bold, though no doubt the age

of lasers and postscript has now created a far wider range of

choice.  Beware: when I received their very first Spanish

disks, the upside down question marks were floating in mid

line, and they simply doubled the "more-than" and "less-than"

signs to create quotation marks.  Perhaps this has been

solved by now--ask before you order.  Windows Write and Word

for Windows, with their Mac-like environment, are also likely

to handle these characters well, but they require powerful

systems to run at their best.  .

     

     6)  SHAREWARE: weighing in here most impressively is a

new multilingual word processor called INTEXT.   You can

download it free on many bulletin boards (most recent

version: INTEXT12.ZIP) or send away for a more complete

version from its creator. (3)  It boasts several accompanying 

files for many languages, though you can only use one at a time.  

The file called "&EUROPE"  contains keyboards for most of that

continent's tongues based on the latin alphabet and even

allows you to choose between QWERTY and AZERTY in French.

Other files are entitled Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Greek, Russian,

Polish, and "Yugoslavian."  You will not see the letters on

the screen, however, and I have to confess that unlike others

I haven't got it to print very much yet, either because of

the age of my printer or my aversion to changing my dip

switches again.  The program comes up readily on my monitor

(which an earlier version didn't) and claims to work only

with 24-pin dot matrix printers, though this may have changed

by now.  One other shareware program, a golden oldie called

CHIWRITER, is also worth mentioning.  You will still find

older versions gratis on BBS's, but its creators have now

opted for respectability and put out a still modestly priced

commercial version. (4)  It will give you Greek along with

lots of math and symbols, some accented characters, and a few

other typographical gismos.  Its typefaces are pretty

rudimentary, but newer versions boast laserjet quality.

     

     HARDWARE SOLUTIONS:  These include not only messing with

dip switches (I always use the shirt-pocket hook end of a

ballpoint pen-top for these, though a toothpick works too)

but actual boards you can insert inside your machine.  Both

Hercules and Rampage boast such boards with character

capability, but make sure your computer and all its

attachments are unplugged before you try opening the box!  I

have no first hand experience of either board--can some of

our readers provide more details?  Specific query: does

anyone know if the Duke University Language Toolkit still

exists--haven't heard about it for a while.

     

     As I said about Cyrillic, some translators imagine there

is simply no way to use foreign characters, but the real

wonder is the sheer number of options.  If you are using yet

another method our readers could profit from, by all means

let us know, and we'll include it in further coverage of this

subject later this year.  It would be helpful if you could

tell us what systems, printers, monitors, graphics cards, or

parent programs it works (or doesn't work) with.

     

     And now, since I've recommended the Mac so highly,  a

few words on the great Mac-PC debate.  My own view is roughly

this: the Mac is already a fine machine and likely to get

even better.  The newer versions are much cheaper, though not

if you want color.  But if I were starting over again today,

I would still choose an IBM Clone for most (though not all)

purposes for three reasons:


     1)  Compatibility--seven out of eight personal computers

are still IBM's or clones.


     2)  Ultimate expense--software for the Mac is almost

always more expensive than PC Software, not even including:
     

     3)  Shareware--the vast range of software available for

the PC free or for nominal sums.  It keeps being created and

improved at a staggering rate.  There is probably as much new

shareware and public domain software available for the PC

every few months as the entire supply of Mac shareware.  This

remarkable storehouse of the useful and playful in my opinion

ranks right up there with papyrus scrolls, illuminated

manuscripts, the first encyclopedias, radio, film and

television as one of humanity's major cultural achievements.

And it keeps on growing in front of us.

     

     One final thought--I hope I'm not sounding too flip or

smug about computers.  If I advise you in passing to install

a language module or delve into DOS or open your machine and

plug in a board, I'm not for an instant suggesting that any

of these is necessarily easy to do, especially if you are

trying it for the first time.  Some computer tasks are

intrinsically difficult, even for

highly skilled people, and no one should feel guilty if

things are sometimes hard going.  But just as frequently such

procedures can actually be easy and usually need to be done

only once.  If a particular task takes forever and bogs you

down in endless calls to Tech Support numbers, then it may

not be what you need, and perhaps another solution will work

better.

     

     (1)  Contact the WordPerfect Corporation, 1555 North

Technology Way, Orem, UT 84057, for more details.  TEL:(800)

451-5151.

     (2)  FancyFont & FancyWord are available from SoftCraft,

Inc, 222 State Street, Madison, WI 53703, TEL: (608) 257-

3300.

     (3)  The latest INTEXT program with all language files

is available for $49 from Intex Software Systems

International, P.O. Box 3068, Stamford, CT 06905-0068.  They

also have listings of programs for other languages, and some

of these will be reviewed in future articles.

     (4)  The last price I saw for the commercial version of

CHIWRITER was $79, but check with CHIWRITER, Horstmann

Software Design, P.O. Box 4544, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.


	NOTE: This piece originally appeared in the May 1991
issue of the ATA Chronicle, published by the American Translators
Association.