Correctly Display Copyright Symbol in Windows Cobol Application

Are you trying to display this character using a DISPLAY statement or is this on a graphical Window such as Dialog System?

You can define these data items as:

01 copyright-symbol    pic n national value NX"00A9".  

or

01 copyright-symbol   pic x value X"A9".

I believe that if you are trying to display these directly to a standard console window then this may not be supported.

I changed the font on the console window to Lucida Console which should include this character but when I try to display it it shows as just a "c" instead of the actual copyright symbol.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your prompt response. I tried both of your suggestions but received the same results with both

(the symbol displayed looks like an "L" rotated 90 degrees to the right).

Rita

I'm displaying the verbiage on the terminal by using screen positioning and not the DISPLAY statement.

Can you please show me what this screen positioning looks like in your program?

     ******************************************************************

     * Variables for display on CRT routine.                          *

     ******************************************************************

     *

      01  910-IDX                         PIC S9(004) COMP.

      01  910-ATTRIBUTE-CODE-X.

          05  910-ATTRIBUTE-CODE          PIC  X(001) COMP-X.

      01  910-SCREEN-POSITION.

          05  910-SCREEN-POSITION-LINE    PIC  9(002).

          05  910-SCREEN-POSITION-COLUMN  PIC  9(002).

     *

     ******************************************************************

     * Parameters for Micro Focus CBL_WRT_SCR_CHATTRS call.           *

     ******************************************************************

     *

      01  910-SCREEN-COORDINATES.

          05  910-SCREEN-COORDINATE-LINE          PIC  X(001) COMP-X.

          05  910-SCREEN-COORDINATE-COLUMN PIC  X(001) COMP-X.

      01  910-SCREEN-ATTR-BUFFER.

          05  910-SCREEN-ATTR-BUFFER-ATTR  PIC  X(001)

                                           OCCURS 2000 TIMES.

      01  910-SCREEN-TEXT-BUFFER.  

          05  910-SCREEN-TEXT-BUFFER-CHAR  PIC  X(001)

                                           OCCURS 2000 TIMES.

      01  910-SCREEN-LENGTH                             PIC  X(002) COMP-X.

      01  910-SCREEN-STATUS-CODE                PIC  X(002) COMP-X.

      01  910-DISPLAY-LENGTH                             PIC S9(004) COMP.

      01  910-BACKGROUND-COLOR                  PIC  X(010).

      01  910-FOREGROUND-COLOR                  PIC  X(010).

      01  910-HI-INTENSITY                                     PIC  X(001).

      01  910-BLINK                                                   PIC  X(001).                

     **********

      910-DISPLAY-SCREEN.

     ******************************************************************

     * Write text and attributes to screen.                           *

     ******************************************************************

          CALL "CBL_WRITE_SCR_CHATTRS" USING 910-SCREEN-COORDINATES,

                                             910-SCREEN-TEXT-BUFFER,

                                             910-SCREEN-ATTR-BUFFER,

                                             910-SCREEN-LENGTH

                                   RETURNING 910-SCREEN-STATUS-CODE.

OK, so I have been doing some research on this and what I have found is that this has nothing to do with COBOL and has everything to do with the codepage that Windows is using by default.

The copyright symbol is not included in the default codepage for the United States which is codepage 437.

In order to get the character to display in a console window you need to change the codepage to 850 which is for Western European countries.

You can do this using the chcp command from a .bat file prior to running your application.

You also have to ensure that the default font used in the console window is one that also supports the character that you wish to display.

You can change the default font used by the console window by starting it up and clicking on its menu and selecting Defaults-->Font.

Lucida Console is a font that you can select that does support the copyright symbol.

I tested this using Lucida Console and ran a .bat file that did chmod 850 and then executed a program with your test code, modified to display character pic x value x"A9" and it displayed the copyright symbol correctly.

Thanks.

Wow - this is so awesome!!

Thank you so much for your help on this - much appreciated!