20th November 2001
Nothing excites me more than discovering a hidden feature (or program) in my operating system. Yeah, I know. I need a life. Actually, I already have one - but it's only on loan. I inherited a handful of new utilities when I moved from Win98 to Win2k. One of them, as Lockergnomie Will Madgett discovered, was a holdover: the Private Character Editor (EUDCEDIT.EXE). This utility will allow you to append customized characters to any installed font. So, if a typeface doesn't include a degree symbol, you can create one and virtually attach it to the TTF. Heck, you could even draw your own little picture with it. Anything's possible (although not always practical). Will also found something in WinXP that (I believe) may have come with Windows Millennium Edition, too. It's a self-extracting / self-installing archive wizard! Click Start | Run and enter: "IEXPRESS.EXE" (sans quotes). If you get an error message, then the tool didn't come with your version of Windows. If the program launches, then you're good to go. No need to install another program when you've got this kind of functionality built-in! In fact, and don't tell anybody else this, I haven't needed to install WinZip since I leaped to XP. Shhhh!