There may not be any method of entering the special characters unless you can find a key marked "ALT" on the machine. That gives you four situations: 1. Display and entry possible. 2. Display OK but cut-and-paste from a table is necessary. 3. Display is incorrect but characters can be entered (although they won't display correctly). This can make proof-reading difficult. 4. Display is incorrect and cut-and-paste requires a descriptive table. Also, under some conditions, lynx 2.4 can display some characters incorrectly, swapping the values of some adjacent characters in the character set. The characters are displayed incorrectly by lynx when viewing a file with the http:// protocol and will misprint the file the same way when the lynx "p" command is used to print the displayed file to a text file. It is important only in the fact that a table you may copy to your directory using "p" may be incorrect in a few character positions if it is necessary to use cut-and-paste with a descriptive table. To check for character entry, first see if there is a key marked "ALT" on your terminal. If so, they may be using a standard PC as a terminal. In that case, start editing a file of yours and then press the ALT key, and type "0233" (without the quotes) on the number pad (not the top row of numbers) of the keyboard. Don't release the ALT key until all four digits have been typed. (I will abbreviate this to ALT-0233.) If what you get is an "e" with an accute accent, then you can probably enter all of the characters you need directly. The numeric codes are shown in the "htmlchars.html" file mentioned below. They are in the form ê where you can use the three digits (without the "&#" or ";"). If the terminal is running under Windows, a leading "0" may have to be typed. Try ALT-0161 and ALT-161. If you get two inverted "!" characters, then the leading zero can be omitted. If you get one inverted "!" and a letter "i" with an accute accent, then the leading zero is necessary. If you get an upper-case THETA (which looks like "O" with "-" through it) with the ALT-0233 key sequence then the character was probably entered correctly but the terminal is using the IBM PC character set instead of the ISO character set. To enter (or view) the characters, you will probably have to view the "htmlchars.html" file and note how the characters are mis-displayed on the terminal. That will probably be necessary when reading web pages as well because when you see words like "Québec" they may look a bit like "QuObec" and not "Quebec". If ALT-0233 generates an unaccented lower-case "i", then try ALT-0234, ALT-0235, and ALT-0236. If that gives you "jkl", then the characters MAY have been entered properly but the terminal may be using only seven bits for the characters and is displaying the upper half of the character set as a duplicate of the lower half. If the chart below (except for the final "X") looks like the initial chart in the file at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/charset.html then your terminal is using seven-bit characters for its display. (The "-" may also appear to be missing in the top row of the chart.) ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _ ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~ X If the initial table in the file looks like the one below, then seven-bit characters are all that is displayed on the terminal and the lynx character-swapping bug has shown up. Note the swapping of what looks (in the html file) like "@" and "A", "D" and "E", "H" and "I", "R" and "S", "Y" and "Z", "`" and "a", "h" and "i", "l" and "m", "r" and "s", and, finally, "y" and "z". Strangely, "d" and "e" are not affected and "L" and "M" are also exempt. ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? A @ B C E D F G I H J K L M N O P Q S R T U V W X Z Y [ \ ] ^ _ a ` b c d e f g i h j k m l n o p q s r t u v w x z y { | } ~ X If your display can't show the characters properly, you can use the descriptive table from htmlchars.html and pick the characters by their descriptions: 1. Copy a set of the special characters in to the document you want to edit. The characters have to be in a file in one of your directories on CCN. You can use Control-R followed by Control-T to bring up a list of your files and then use the cursor keys to select the one you want to copy into your document. Then press the ENTER (or RETURN) key. 2. Move the cursor to a copy of the character you want elsewhere in your document. 3. Press Control-^ (or Control-6) to start marking. 4. Move the cursor to the right by one character position to mark the one special character only. 5. Press Control-K to cut the character out of the chart. 6. If you will need it again later, press Control-U immediately to paste the character back into the table. 7. Move the cursor to the place in your document where you want the special character and press Control-U (possibly again) to paste the character into your document. If the special characters are needed for one of your web pages, then you don't have to enter the special characters at all. You can use the "numeric entities" by using &#ddd; to represent the character (replacing the "ddd" with the correct number from the chart in the "htmlchars.html" file or &name; where "name" is the name of the character fron the second of the two files listed below. © would display the (C) copyright symbol for example. Note also, that on web pages, you display the characters: & < > " with & < > " (the ";" is usually necessary and always allowed even where optional.) More on the ISO-8859-1 character set can be found at these two pages: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~phoenix1/html/charset.htm and http://www.riconnect.com/roop/reference/ISO-8859.html-ssi There are also some notes there about Windows and Macintosh misuse of some character values. Note also: the use of accented characters also depends on the person at the other end having the proper configuration for displaying the characters. In some cases, the wrong character may be displayed by *their* system. On other cases, the special characters may not show up at all. And mail systems may mangle high characters. I have had cases of quoted text from my messages being returned with the accented characters changed to something else. Somewhere the characters got altered in the mail system or on the other person's computer system while making the round trip. So you can't count on the person at the other end being able to read the special characters without a trial message or two to confirm or disprove it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------