Specifying Special Characters

Some fonts contain characters that are not mapped to the keyboard and cannot be typed directly into a text string. To display these special characters, substitute a character code or a hexadecimal value in the text string.

Character codes include the letters , numbers , punctuation marks, and symbols that are commonly found on a keyboard. They are usually associated with symbols or national alphabets. These codes enable you to display the character by specifying the font and using the keyboard character in the text string.

For example, to produce the character , assign the Greek font and specify the character code z in the text string.

 title font=greek z;

Hexadecimal values are any two-digit hexadecimal numbers enclosed in quotation marks and followed by the letter x, for example, 3D x. (In double-byte character sets, the hexadecimal values contain four digits, for example, 4E60 x.)

You display characters with hexadecimal values the same way that you display them with character codes, that is, by specifying the font that contains the special character and placing the hexadecimal value in the text string. For example, this TITLE statement uses hexadecimal 18 to produce & pound ; in the Zapf type style. (This example assumes a U.S. key map).

 title font=zapf 18x;

Note: The character code or hexadecimal value associated with any character in any font is dependent on the key map that is currently being used.

In addition, you can use a key map to map selected characters to your keyboard. For example, if you want to be able to type e directly, you could create a key map that maps e to the key that usually generates the asterisk (*) and a device map that maps e to your output device. Then, when you press the * key, although you see * on your display, e is produced on your graphics device. See Chapter 34, The GKEYMAP Procedure, on page 983 for details.