Nul character on Windows 7

Jac2904 · Post by **Jac2904** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 9:48 am

Hello, I've problem with nul character not displaying the black box.
I use textpad 5.4.2 and on Windows XP I have those box but nothing on my windows 7 32bit.

Is this a configuration I miss?

Thx

Jac2904 · Post by **Jac2904** » Thu Jun 30, 2011 7:09 am

Anyone have an idea ?

caseycp · Post by **caseycp** » Thu Jul 07, 2011 6:46 pm

I too have a similar issue. Textpad is not displaying certain ASCII characters correctly in Windows 7 environment. Specifically ASCII 254 (little black box). This character is a specific delimiter for a filetype we use all the time (Concordance load file), and Textpad acting weird about it, is making me regret "upgrading" to Windows 7.

One image shows what a text file looks on Windows 7 (paragraph marks), and the other shows what the same file looks like on Windows XP or Server 2003 (black box):

It would be one thing, if TextPad just displayed it differently, but it also affects how I can select text in the document; the cursor doesn't align correctly with what's being highlighted...very very odd.

No other filetype is affected, and we've tried it on multiple machines, always the same: WinXP with TextPad 5 = good. Win7 with TextPad 5 = not so good.

Any help would be appreciated.

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Thu Jul 07, 2011 9:32 pm

The character with code 254 (0xFE) is not Â¶ (pilcrow, or paragraph or section mark) but Ã¾ (lower-case thorn). The code of Â¶ is 182 (0xB6). So the character that's not being displayed correctly is the one with code 182.

That is a matter of the font. You need to find a font in which has a representation for character 182.

(Incidentally, nether of these characters is an ASCII character. ASCII is a 7-bit character code; it stops at 127.)

caseycp · Post by **caseycp** » Thu Jul 07, 2011 9:56 pm

Ben,
Sorry I mis-typed. Yes, the character in question is not 254, but ASCII 20. The "lower-case thorns" display correctly, it's the other ones that do not.

I wasn't even aware you could change the font in TextPad. Can you point me in the right direction to the menu item?

Also, any thoughts of why, when I open files with this particular character in them, the cursor/display gets screwy?

Thank you,
-Casey

ben_josephs · Post by **ben_josephs** » Fri Jul 08, 2011 8:56 am

20 (0x14)? That's the ASCII control character DC4 (Device Control 4). If it was being displayed as Â¶ you were using a font with the obsolete OEM/DOS character set. If you really must have it displayed in this non-ASCII way you need a font that supports that old character set. Open
Configure | Preferences | Document Classes | <Class> | Font
or
View | Document Properties | Font
and look for a font that allows you to select the Script OEM/DOS.
You may have a font called Terminal that supports it.

I have no idea why the cursor isn't behaving properly.

caseycp · Post by **caseycp** » Fri Jul 08, 2011 5:47 pm

I don't believe it's a font issue. Here are screen shots selecting the same font Courier on the same file on the two different Windows systems:
Windows 7

Windows XP

Selecting Terminal font in either environment displays ASCII 020 as Â¶. Truth is, I don't really care how it's displayed, whether it be a pilcrow, thorn, smiley face, or eye of Ra, but I do think it's a symptom of a bug, which manifests as the cursor not lining up where it's supposed to be. I don't know if the bug is with TextPad or Windows.

I do appreciate the help and the advice. It may just be one of those things I'll learn to live with, having to terminal into an XP box to manipulate these sorts of text files. Ah well...

Cheers,

-Casey

hartertw · Post by **hartertw** » Thu Oct 06, 2011 11:02 pm

I'm having the same issue as caseycp with the cursor not lining up and text selection being screwy with Concordance DAT files that have ASCII 020 in them.

I'm on Win 7 x64 with TextPad 5.4.2.

This happens with almost every font selection I have tried. One that did seem to fix this for me was Consolas Regular at 11pt. Note: any other font size for Consolas other than 11pt and the same issue occurs.

Thanks in advance,

~Troy

hartertw · Post by **hartertw** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 11:38 pm

Any news on this?

kaheidt · Post by **kaheidt** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 7:05 pm

Also looking for an update on this

Post by **bbadmin** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 3:25 pm

TextPad doesn't handle non-printing characters specially, it just uses whatever glyph is defined for each character code in the selected font. It seems that Windows 7 has changed some of those. It must also use variable widths for them as well, which causes the cursor to get out of position.
The only workaround I can suggest is to find a font that still works. I see one poster has reported success with Consolas Regular at 11pt, but FixedSys may also work.

idburns · Post by **idburns** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 11:31 pm

Other text editors can render these characters/symbols just fine. I'd prefer to stick with TextPad though.

EDIT - Consolas 11pt works. Now I just have to remember that...

idburns · Post by **idburns** » Wed May 09, 2012 4:18 pm

I'm having issues again with this, even with Consolas regular 11 selected my text selections are still off when selecting text past about the 30th character in a line.

I tried Fixedsys and that has the same issue past about the 30th character. I hate to say it but I might have to switch text editors which really sucks.