Computer Letter: Quotation marks

I was fascinated by the letters on getting proper quotation marks in fancy word processors.

Having recently upgraded to a PC from a lowly Amstrad PCW, I looked forward to all the bells and whistles, only to conclude that these things are bought at a high price. Wordperfect, for example, proudly describes as 'WP Special Characters' things I regard as everyday parts of speech.

I am writing this on the despised Locoscript Professional word processor. With its humbler PCW-based predecessor, I have been able for six years to take for granted easy access to every conceivable European character, accent and punctuation mark - not to mention a full Greek or Cyrillic keyboard at the press of 'Alt' and a function key.

I have only once seen Locoscript even mentioned in a PC magazine, yet it comes with its own integrated database, merge and spellcheck - with a fully English vocabulary - at a fraction of the price of programs that cannot even print all the characters I want.

Ian Leslie

London SE24