((This experiment is based on something I learned from Woody 
Leonhard's "Underground Guide to Word for Windows". Addison-
Wesley. Get a copy!)) 
I've been confused during the large conversion project, with the 
plethora of symbols that mysteriously dissolve into a left-
parenthesis. Or nothing. Or switch to become a plus sign. 
Incoming Wp51 documents are scientific, and host symbols such as 
the "greater-than-or-equal-to" (ò) and the "plus-or-minus" (ñ). 
I'm not sure how the parenthesised symbols in the preceding text 
will appear on your DOS screen. In each case, there is a single 
character, ascii 242 and ascii 241 if you're into generating 
characters by holding down the Alt key and using the numeric 
keypad. 
In Microsoft Word6.0 I generated four DIFFERENT plus-minus 
characters, and four DIFFERENT greater-equals symbols.
Method 1: Choose Insert Symbol, select "mathb" font, insert the 
          symbol. Type the letters "mathb 40". Start a new 
          paragraph. 
         
Method2:  Choose Insert Symbol, select "MSLineDraw" font, insert the 
          symbol. Type the letters "MSLineDraw 40". Start a new 
          paragraph. 
         
Method3:  In Program Manager, Accessories, Charmap, select 
          TTSymbol as the font, Select and Copy the symbol, in 
          MSWord, paste it to the document.  Type the letters 
          "Charmap 177". Start a new paragraph.             
Method4:  In Microsoft Word, tap the Plus key, shift-equals to 
          you, then select the character (Shift left-arrow) and 
          underline it (Ctrl-U). Type the letters "Underline 
          Plus 43". Start a new paragraph. 
Print the document on your printer. Chances are you'll be able to 
eyeball the differences between the four characters. For example, 
on my HPLJ4L printer there is a distinct gap between the plus and 
the underline, a gap in the Charmap, but less of a gap in the 
Insert Symbol efforts.
If you were to display the stored character code (see the cute 
macro at the end of this message) for each of the four 
characters, you would find that the first two (Insert Symbol) 
have the ascii code of 40. Which happens to be the ascii code for 
a left parentheses (Thanks Woody!). Strange that, eh? The CharMap 
version is an ascii 177 (whaaaaaat? He asks, reaching for the 
ascii tables in the back of his printer manual), while the 
underlines plus is, of course, an ascii 43. Right on! 
Here's what my printout looks like, sort of:
            ñ mathb 40
            ñ MSLineDraw 40
            ñ Charmap 177
            ñ Underline plus 43
Now repeat the exercise for the greater-than-or-equals symbol:
            ò mathb 40
            ò MSLineDraw 40
            ò Charmap 179
            ò Underline greater-than 62
It seems to me, he said, groping for the truth, that some of the 
people creating WP51 documents had used an underlined plus sign, 
which is why, if/when undelrines get stripped, somme of the plus-
minuses become plus signs only. Sigh. I wrote "somme" there, 
because at time sit *does* seem like a battle.
It seems to me that where I have written a macro to detect the 
plus-minus and generate a REALLY GOOD version, using the Insert 
Symbol feature of Word, should formatting get stripped, or the 
internal workings of Word hiccough, I'm left with a left 
parenthesis. Sigh.
And if (shudder!) I'd be of a mind to write a macro that in 
recognising other constructs, used a Charmap plus-minus (because 
it was a Tuesday when I wrote *that* macro!), then I'm going to 
get a 177 code which is a, er, a shaded lozenge at the best of 
times on dot-matrix printers, and may be close to invisible on a 
laser if I've used a coloured style. Sigh.
I'm rambling, I know, wandering in the dark. I wish I'd known 
this at the start of the project.
Smile! You haven't started converting *your* 1,000 documents yet, 
and now you know yet another trap for young players!
' Christopher Greaves 1997
' DisplayCharCode
Sub MAIN
    MsgBox Str$(Asc(Selection$()))
    CharRight
End Sub
From      christopher.greaves@ablelink.org
          christopher.greaves@pro-mail.com
 * 1st 2.00b #6263 * People and Computers
--- PCBoard (R) v15.3 (OS/2) 5
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