Spanish characters in Cobol-how to?

I am working on a Cobol program that produces letters. The verbage is
hard coded in the
program. My task is to add a Spanish translation to the current English
wording. My problem is: how do I get a tilde and accent marks in the
Spanish?

Thanks,
Brian

On 8 Aug 2006 07:05:30 -0700, "hp3kpro" <BJLPA@hotmail.com> wrote:

>I am working on a Cobol program that produces letters. The verbage is
>hard coded in the
>program. My task is to add a Spanish translation to the current English
>wording. My problem is: how do I get a tilde and accent marks in the
>Spanish?

What is your environment?

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Howard Brazee wrote:
> On 8 Aug 2006 07:05:30 -0700, "hp3kpro" <BJLPA@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>
> What is your environment?
>
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On 8 Aug 2006 09:01:38 -0700, "hp3kpro" <BJLPA@hotmail.com> wrote:

>HP3000. MPE\ix .
>
>
>
>Howard Brazee wrote: 

I can't help you there, maybe somebody else can.

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hp3kpro wrote:
> I am working on a Cobol program that produces letters. The verbage is
> hard coded in the
> program. My task is to add a Spanish translation to the current
> English wording. My problem is: how do I get a tilde and accent marks
> in the Spanish?

Just type them in. COBOL doesn't care what characters are used in a text
field.

I wouldn't think the platform would be important as COBOL is pretty
much COBOL.
Do I have to resort to using some escape sequences or hex?
Thanks.

Howard Brazee wrote:
> On 8 Aug 2006 09:01:38 -0700, "hp3kpro" <BJLPA@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>
> I can't help you there, maybe somebody else can.
>
>  Posted Via mcse.ms Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
> ----------------------------------------------------------
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One can't type 2 characters at the same time. In other words, as in the
word nino, the "~" has to go above the second letter n.


HeyBub wrote:
> hp3kpro wrote: 
>
> Just type them in. COBOL doesn't care what characters are used in a text
> field.

On 8 Aug 2006 11:46:18 -0700, "hp3kpro" <BJLPA@hotmail.com> wrote:

>I wouldn't think the platform would be important as COBOL is pretty
>much COBOL.
>Do I have to resort to using some escape sequences or hex?
>Thanks.

Possibly.   If your editor doesn't put them in, you would have to put
them in.   But if you use hex, it matters whether you are using ASCII
or EBCDIC.     But if you can type in your code (that isn't dependent
upon a font being loaded into Word or such), you should be able to use
it.   Or you can use whatever your printer understands, if it is to be
printed.

I typed in alt-0241 to get this: ñ
I typed in alt-0209 to get this:  Ñ

http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm


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hp3kpro wrote:
> I am working on a Cobol program that produces letters. The verbage is
> hard coded in the program.

That is the first mistake.  The verbage should be, for example, a
template that the
program merges into. Then any template can be used without the program
caring.
I do most of my printer output by merging into postscript templates.
All my XML,
HTML and data interchange is templated.

You could write out a text merge file that a word processor could use.

> My task is to add a Spanish translation to the current English
> wording. My problem is: how do I get a tilde and accent marks in the
> Spanish?

Presumably the 'letters' are to be printed rather than just be part of
the program. This requires that you first ask what the printer requires
in order to produce the correct characters. Then you would need to find
out what value those characters were and work out how to generate them
in the program. The code set used by your screen and keyboard may be
quite different but that is irrelevant as long as it is correct on the
printer.

For example on HP LaserJet Roma-8 symbol set the N~ and n~ are hex B6
and B7. These may appear as box drawing characters under Windows. Of
course a spanish keyboard might be useful for this, and set the screen
using code-set or someother mechanism to display the required
characters.

hp3kpro wrote:
> I am working on a Cobol program that produces letters. The verbage is
> hard coded in the
> program. My task is to add a Spanish translation to the current English
> wording. My problem is: how do I get a tilde and accent marks in the
> Spanish?
>
> Thanks,
> Brian
>
You might get some tips googling. Try the search phrase
"Spanish-Characters" in Google - I got 51,000 hits. There's a download
for $10 - don't know if it is relevant.

Jimmy