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Re: Using NB to Convert (was Re: XP & malware, then: Attachments and HTML )



Bill,

Do you do footnotes much? Do you ever try to go to expanded mode while editing a footnote?

And do you use styles ?

Regards,
Harry

Hello Jordan,

I have often had very good results simply cutting and pasting into NB; usually you need to do after that is adjust the font at the beginning of the document.

Harry, I find it unusual that NB 9 crashes daily for you.  I cannot remember the last time it crashed for me.  Perhaps you should simply reinstall (just run the installer over your existing installation).  I've been using NB since version 2, nearly 20 years ago, and version 9 is the most stable one for me.

Cheers,

Bill TeBrake
UMaine History, Emeritus

On 6/21/2012 8:34 AM, Harry Binswanger wrote:
Jordan says there is not much formatting in these documents. The simplest thing would be to go into expanded mode, run a pgm to extract everything that is in guillemets and put them into a separate file and either send that to the list or test it oneself.

Jordan: despite what you may be feeling now, this is NOT a real problem; this is some fussy little thing(s) which, once identified, will be quite simple to fix.

E.g., just for illustration, suppose from Xy3, you have a and NB wants two arguments there , then you just do a ci /// and you're home free. And if this is a recurring problem (many Xy3 files to take into NB) then you make an XPL program.

In the main, NB is XyWrite with a few tweaks and a better screen display.

I agree that NB 10 beta is not ready for us. I don't even find 9 to be ready. It crashes daily in my use. Practically any editing of footnotes makes it crash. Unrecognized styles can crash it.


Dear Jordan

I think there is a difference between XY3 and XY4 formatting that can affect what you see in NB.  You might want to try the option in NB9 of importing in NBDOS format (if you choose open and look in the formats box it should be there).

There are a lot of formatting commands from XY4 that NB does not recognise properly, as I recall.  From what you describe, this is down to one or more of them.  I generate everything in NB9 now so I never bump into those type of problem any more.  By the way, NB10 is not really ready for XY users yet so I would stick with NB9 for this for now.

You might want to check what codepage you are using with XY4 and make sure this matches Windows and NB (sorry, I cannot now remember how to set about that now but somebody else here will know).

The only other option is to trawl through the document trying to identify the formatting commands that don't work.  However if there are a lot of them it will likely be extremely tedious so I'm not sure I would recommend that.  (Not much help I'm afraid.)

Unless we are talking about legacy documents here, why not start generating them in NB?  There isn't much of a learning curve and NB is pretty easy to set up so that it will run with XYWWWEB.  Robert has posted a video showing how to adapt it which you can follow.  I don't follow his scheme and just make some minor changes to the NB.DFL file which I can pass on if you want.  I also use NB's own startup file called NBSTART.INT, more or less filling it with what I used to have in XYSTART.INT.  Oh, and there is a minor addition to NB.DLG.

I'm sorry if that is not much help.

On 21/06/2012 00:17, J R FOX wrote:
Harry & Paul:

O.K., I just did a first trial of this and the results were not
encouraging.  The source was a moderately formatted legal document.  (If it wasn't confidential in nature, I might have supplied it as
a test sample.)  Maybe the problem was that it was written in Xy-3,
rather than Xy-4 ?  I could see there was a big problem from the
very start, when NB first tried to open it.  The document opened
looking like some teeny tiny JPEG graphic, too small to be seen
really, and at the bottom right status line it said either "Unknown
Formatting Commands" or "Unrecognized Formatting Commands" -- not
that it makes that much difference.  (This was in NB 9, as I haven't
done anything regarding NB 10 as yet.)  I took no further steps at
this point, like trying to do a conversion to RTF.  Did I botch this
by the way I went about it, or . . . ?


   Jordan



--- On Thu, 6/7/12, Harry Binswanger mailto:hb@xxxxxxxx wrote:

From: Harry Binswanger mailto:hb@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Attachments and HTML (was Re: XP & malware)
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Date: Thursday, June 7, 2012, 7:27 AM



I have been using NB to edit the later chapters of my book.
When each is in nearly final form, needing only tiny changes and
proofing, I export them as RTF and take them into (ugh) Word. The
translation part goes well.


Dear Jordan


I've just returned and haven't been following this thread but I use NB
exclusively now and convert into RTF regularly.  For me that has
worked well although there can be hiccups if there are stray NB/Xy
embedded instructions.  Then it becomes a matter of finding and
eliminating them.  I export large files containing tables and
footnotes without difficulty.  Is that of any help?


Best wishes


Paul