Conversion filters

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Robert recommended that I give XyW's native (W4W) filters another try,
and I did. (The last time I tried to use them, I converted to WordPerfect
5, the last version on the list, only to find that WP 7, which I was
using then, couldn't read that. This time I used WP for Windows.) I also
ran the same file through WP's native import filters and WordPort's. The
results are attached, since my mail program goes haywire when I import a
XyWrite file with any halfway advanced formatting. The final verdict is
that the different filters each do some things right and some wrong, and
NONE of them get everything I need--and I'm not talking fonts or page
layout stuff here, just the minimum to be able to give files to clients
in formats they've heard of, after using Xy to get rid of all the
redundant formatting that they--and their kludgy bloatware--have put in.
Does NB Win really solve this problem? The price is pretty steep for
conversion filters, and I don't need it for anything else (except the
bibliography module, if that works--as Ibid for Xywrite did NOT!)
Patricia

®FL¯®NJ¯Results of using various conversion filters on a single XyW DOS file. This was the file (sampleÿ2Etxt):
Testing XyWþs built-in conversion filters: þThis is the beginning of a quotation, and
this is a þ
quote within a quote,þ and its end.þ	
®IP5DI,10DI,5DI¯This is a hanging indent (5,10,5 di) including some text in
®MD+IT¯italic,®MD-IT¯ and ®MD+BO¯bold,®MD-BO¯ and even
®MD+IT¯®MD+BO¯bold ital.®MD-IT¯®MD-BO¯
®IP0DI,0DI¯Now we will try some autocounters:®DC1=1.1.1¯
®C1¯. Counter one.
	®C2¯.	Counter two
	®C2¯.	Counter two again.
®C1¯. Back to counter one.
®C1¯. Counter one.
	®C2¯.	Counter two
		®C3¯. Counter three
	®C2¯.	Counter two again.
Some diacritics:
acute e, cap and lc.:	?, ?
grave a:	?
grave i:	?
circumflex i:	?
cap A circumflex: þD
End of Sample.txt
1ÿ2E XyWrite's built-in (W4W) filters:
Itals and bf, and even bold ital, come over OK, as do ASCII accented charactersÿ2E Counters,
however, are hardcoded (and Wrong!), IP commands are also lost, above-255 valued codes are just
stripped, and the apostrophe/close single quote is just the plain ASCII oneÿ2E
2ÿ2E WordPerfect 2000's built-in filters:
No modes came over, not even boldÿ2E Autocounters are code, not values, but the DC command has
been ignored: what was supposed to be a legal-style series (1ÿ2E, 1ÿ2E1,
1ÿ2E1ÿ2E1) has become an old-fashioned Aÿ2E Bÿ2E Cÿ2E, with arabic numbers
in the second level and lowercase letters in the thirdÿ2E The high-order characters got
included as odd combinations that could be fixed with a search-and-replace macro in WPÿ2E
Eÿ2Egÿ2E, smart quotes (264 & 265) came over as combinations of 4,2; 5,18 and 4,2,
respectively (that is, 264 in Xy = 4,2 followed by 5,18 in WP, and 265 = 4,2), but without itals,
the game's not worth the candleÿ2E
3ÿ2E WordPort (DOS, version with date of 1/24/1995:
Results: The modes, the diacritics, and the autonumbering came over correctlyÿ2E All tabs, however, except for those in hanging indent, got stripped outÿ2E The smart apostrophe/close single quote was also mucked up, being rendered as 2,3, when it should be 4,28 (this is the thing that Leslie and I called to their attention years ago and they refuse to fix)ÿ2E I did not, however, include em and en dashes, and I recall that the en dash doesn't convert correctly eitherÿ2E