--- The good Oskar wrote:
> I hope nobody will resent me for taking this position. It should be
> remembered, as I stated above, that this course is the result of our
> work done in our spare time. We want to contribute. If anybody can
> help us contribute, by solving this particular problem, someone with
> more knowledge of the different standards in computers (there seem
to
> be many candidates), then I would be very grateful for any help from
> those parties :)
Of course, as everyone knows, the internet is not a "one man do
it all" effort, since its notable successes have always been
in the area of cooperation between many users scattered across
the globe, who are nevertheless closely integrated in this
which we call "network".
Whether microsoft is actually "standard" on the internet, I doubt.
Even microsoft has had to take its hat off and bow down to standards
invented by others, such as the <html> text encodement system
(invented at C.E.R.N. in Geneva) or the iso-8859 standard
character encodement table. The latter was long used on unix
systems. Even unix is far older than "microsoft", especially
on the internet. And if I am not mistaken, the majority of
important net-servers still use the unix operative system.
Any way, the thing to do is obviously to *convert* the various
file formats. ONe way of facilitating that is by using the RTF
file format. (=Rich Text Format) because it allows the communication
between the different platforms without too much hassle.
Here is the TRICK that suddenly occurred to me, as I was thinking
about the rtf problems we had thus far with respect to the couple
of files that I submitted to the groups file area. As I tried out
my idea this morning, I had success at first try. So here is
a brief description of this TRICK:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IF you download an *.rtf format file on your computer,
and the result is not as expected, do the following:
1) SAVE the file to your harddrive as "text only".
That means that your platform won't be adding any code
in the process of saving it, but that the copy you
write to youir hard-drive will be an exact copy of
the file as it was stored on the site you downloaded it
from.
2) OPEN the file in a suitable editor. But make sure
you open it as a TEXT-only file. Do not open it as an
"rtf" file.
3) If succesful, you will see now the "raw" rtf-code.
Note in particular that the file now begins like thus:
{\rtf1 . . . or as {\rtf0 . . . ,
as the case may be. It is the file's way of telling the
text-parser "now begins the rtf coded text".
4) If you got this far, read on: You will then see that
the text continues like this:
{\rtf1\ansi . . . or as {\rtf0\mac . . .
(or variations like rtf1 <--> rtf0 etc..)
Now, in *some* cases it is this second word "ansi" or "mac"
that has a decisive influence upon how your wordprocessor
interprets the ensuing rtf instructions. And if your screen
is not displaying a meaninful ON text, you might, in some cases
want to substitute "ansi" for the word "mac" or vice versa.
This means that there are two sets of character tables,
and your wordprocessor often has the capability of using *both*,
IF you only tell it to do so. If the ON text appears to be less
than meaningful, the explanation often is that your word-
processor is using the wrong character table. ("ansi" instead
of "mac" or vice versa) However, this problem is in many
cases easy to solve:
5) Use the backwards-delete key and erase the word "ansi"
and write "mac" instead. (or vice versa)
6) Now save the file as a "text-only" file.
7) Now OPEN the file with your word processor.
But this time you should open it as an "rtf-formated" file.
You should now see a meaningful ON text on your screen.
(except for one or two characters, but these you will be
able to guess. and they can be changed by the "search
and replace" function. Or "find" and "find-again" or
whatever it is called on your particular system. in my
case it was the "edh" that had to be given this special
treatment).
So to sum up: "replace the 2nd word "ansi" by the word "mac"
or vice versa".
Best regards from Keth,
who hopes that these remarks will be of use to some of the users.