Overstrike problem

[Björn Isebaert]

I tried to create an overstrike using the EQ field:

EQ \o(.,°) but to no avail: whatever characters I use, I always get the
first character followed by a comma and then the second character (in this
case: .,°) ...

I'm using the Dutch version of Word 2002.

Any idea how to solve this?

Many thanks in advance!

Björn,
Belgium

 

[Klaus Linke]

I tried to create an overstrike using the EQ field:

EQ \o(.,°) but to no avail: whatever characters I use, I always get the
first character followed by a comma and then the second character (in this
case: .,°) ...

I'm using the Dutch version of Word 2002.

Any idea how to solve this?

Many thanks in advance!

Björn,
Belgium

Hi Björn,

In your Windows installation, the field separator is probably set as a
semi-colon instead of a comma.
(It's a setting in "Control Panel > Regional settings > Numbers" for me --
Win98)
Try {EQ \o(.;°)}

The setting influences Find/Replace wildcard searches, too ({n;m} instead
of {n,m}).

Often, the help files aren't translated properly and use the English field
separator.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Björn Isebaert]

Thanks Klaus, for the immediate answer!

That does the job!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, Word's Help file regarding the EQ field has a Note that says:

Some switches require a list of elements separated by commas or semicolons.
Use commas as the separators if the decimal symbol for your system is a
period (specified as part of the regional settings in Microsoft Windows
Control Panel). If the decimal symbol for your system is a comma, use
semicolons.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Klaus Linke]

FWIW, Word's Help file regarding the EQ field has a Note that says:

Some switches require a list of elements separated by commas or semicolons.
Use commas as the separators if the decimal symbol for your system is a
period (specified as part of the regional settings in Microsoft Windows
Control Panel). If the decimal symbol for your system is a comma, use
semicolons.

That help text isn't true, or at least, it isn't the whole story.

Maybe by default, most English machines have set the decimal symbol = "."
and field delimiters as ",", while other languages have the decimal symbol
set to "," and the field delimiter = ";".

But they can be set quite independently. On my machine, both delimiters are
set to ",", for example, because I got tired to translate every field and
wildcard search to "English", and back.

Making fields and wildcard searches dependent of this Windows setting
(which any user can change anytime) was a terrible idea anyway. Thankfully,
Microsoft did away with language-specific field names and "Find/Replace"
placeholders (such as ^p, ^l, ^c ...). It seems MS simply forgot the field
delimiter.

Regards,
Klaus