Re: convert _ _ to ital etc.

[Bill Troop bill@xxxxxxxx]

At 9/25/01 08:03 AM, you wrote:
> Don't you think you set yourself up for trouble by trying to simple
> alternate the two? What if one or more incident is not found -- the whole
> thing gets messed up.
> Is there not any other identifier around, such as maybe a line return after
> each second incident? Then, everything would be much safer and easier.

The thing is, Rene, that there isn't a guaranteed identifier
for each second incident, since the second incident merely
marks the end of the bold or the italic attribute, and could
occur anywhere, even, conceivably, in the middle of a word.
Or am I missing something? Of course, as you point out,
unless the pairs are matched, there will always be an
error, but the error is at least pretty easy to spot on
screen in XyWrite once you have the XyWrite attributes
working. Typically, a whole long section will appear in bold
or italic when you have forgotten one end pair. But ...
there's no way around that, is there? I suppose a program
could get more sophisticated, and be able to count the
number of substitutions, and detect where there was an
unequal number, and pause for intervention or warning, but
that _would_ be work, wouldn't it? More than my modest
needs warrant.

Carl, thanks for the second example program and the clear
explanation thereof.