How to store subscript and superscript values in Progress OpenEdge?

Question

Is there a way to store subscript and superscript values in the Progress database, for example, chemical symbols and formulas, such as C₂H₅OH, and is it possible to display them ? I tried copying from Word and pasting into fill in string fields but it doesn't format correctly, it doesn't recognize subscripted values and it is displayed as C2H5OH.

Answer 1

After some testing I've come this far:

1) You need to start your session with startup parameter -cpinternal utf-8 ie

prowin32.exe -cpinternal utf8

Depending on your need you might also need to set -cpstream utf-8 and possibly -cpcoll basic (or something else that matches your needs).

When I did this I had some strange crashes - but that might be because I edited a file saved in another codepage?

2) You need to get the data into your system (perhaps you already have it?).

I used Word and information found here and further explained here. The subscript font setting are just font settings (not unicode) so don't let that fool you (copy-pasting from your question is exactly the same). Basically you need to write the hexadecimal value of the subscript 2 (2082) in Word and then press Alt + X.

Assuming you want to write the actual data in a Progress based GUI I haven't been successful so far. Perhaps you could look at changing registry values as described in the links and continue along that path. I don't want to do that for just basic testing...

3) You will need a font with decent support for these characters. Some fonts don't support them at all!

Segoe UI:

Default system font (possibly) MS Sans Serif:

Arial:

5) Database? I'm unsure if you will need to use CLOB-fields to store this in your database or not. Most likely you shouldn't.

Hope this is enough to at least get you started!