Re: Conversion to/from MS Word

["Olson, Timothy" timothy_olson@xxxxxxxx]

Rene von Rentzel (aka Yo Intl.) wrote:
>> If your partner is a Mac guy, why not prod him to upgrade to system
7.6.
>> The file converter that comes with the newer Mac systems (File
exchange,
>> was it?) did not look half-bad when I tried it with a XY file the
>> other day. It correctly recognized XY3+ and offered to convert it to
>> a Mac WP of my choice. It got tabs and margins right, something that
>> I can not say about XY "save as" or "Word for Word" conversions.
>>
Leslie Bialler wrote:
>Does it bring over embedded footnotes, Rene? I think that program is
>MacLink, and earlier versions didn't.

I agree about the Mac file-translation program (MacLink, or MacLink
Plus)--it's superior to WfW in several respects, especially formatting
(although I have only used it for going TO XyWrite from other apps, so my
experience is limited). For one thing, it does a great job of recognizing
the app used to create the file. MacLink also gives a much cleaner
resulting file, with only the necessary formatting--whereas WfW throws in
tons of extra formatting, most of it "garbage," increasing the size of
the file by around 50%. (WfW's formatting is applied to every single
paragraph, and is often self-canceling--i.e.,  followed by
; or similarly with tab stops, attributes, etc.) Also, WfW
sometimes gives me  instead of giving me a real tab character at
the beginning of a paragraph.

I do vaguely seem to recall, though, that MacLink may drop out embedded
footnotes. I can't remember for sure, but there was a problem like this
with a MS I translated many months ago--it was either embedded footnotes
or embedded index entries. If anyone's interested in knowing for sure, I
can probably confirm that sometime this week. (We have MacLink Plus v
9.0; and Word for Word v 7.0.)

Tim Baehr mentioned that RTF is a common denominator. I think that's a
great way to go. That may be your best bet, if your version of Xy allows
you to export as RTF.

Rene also mentioned my Word macro, which converts *some* Xy(3) formatting
into Word (6.0) formatting (we use a limited range of formatting
in-house, so I only gave attention to that in the macro). You're welcome
to try that route, but you'd have to adapt the macro to your own
formatting. A former colleague whom I have long ago lost contact with
once showed me a Word macro of his that would convert Word
files/formatting into Xy files/formatting (saving it as a text file). At
the time the macro still had a few bugs in it, and I think one of the
limitations in the scenario was a conflict in the ASCII parity. (I think
he said something like 7-bit vs. 6-bit, whatever that means; or maybe
that's just ASCII vs. ANSI. I don't know.) None of this really helps,
does it? But it's interesting to think that such conversion are possible,
if one had the time and expertise.

Timothy Olson
Editorial/Technical Assistant
Tyndale House Publishers
(630) 668-8310
(630) 668-8311(FAX)
Timothy_Olson@xxxxxxxx