The Source Editor Properties dialog box lets you specify whether to view the text in an editor in the DOS (also called OEM or ASCII) character set or the Windows (also called ANSI) character set. The actual code points in your source do not change; only the way that you view the source changes.

You can also convert between character sets. For example, you may want to convert from the OEM character set to the ANSI character set if you are changing to an ANSI language driver, and your program uses extended characters.

Warning!

Converting your program to a different character set changes the code points of values in your program. You may lose information if a character you convert does not exist in both character sets.

You should carefully review extended characters in your code if you convert between character sets.

Converting from OEM to ANSI

The numeric value of characters is changed when you convert between character sets. For example, if your program was written in the OEM character set and it uses the Ä character (OEM 142), the actual numeric value of the character is changed to 0196 when you convert the program to ANSI, because 0196 is the numeric value of Ä in the ANSI character set.

Alphanumeric characters usually do not cause problems when you convert from an OEM character set to the ANSI character set. Characters that typically do not convert include:

Greek characters other than ß (ANSI 0223) and µ (ANSI 0181)

Line-drawing and box characters

Converting from ANSI to OEM

Lowercase alphanumeric characters in the ANSI character set exist in all OEM character sets and are converted without problems. Uppercase extended alphabetic characters exist in some OEM character sets (such as OEM code page 850) but not in others (such as OEM code page 437). Following are the rules dBASE Plus uses for conversion:

Extended characters in the ANSI set that do not exist in the OEM character set are converted to "similar" characters. For example, the accented À (ANSI 0192) is converted to the capital A in OEM code page 437.

How to convert and view your source code

To convert between character sets:

  1. Open your program or text file in the editor.

Note

Converting between character sets does not change the character set you are using to view your text or program.

To change the way you view your text or program:

  1. Choose Properties|Source Editor Properties.