Re: Translating XyWin to Word or WordStar

["R Tennenbaum"]

On Sat, 13 Jun 1998 13:21:23 +0000, Michael P. Kube-McDowell wrote:

>Help!
>
>I've just finished another manuscript (a whopper--680 pages) using
>XyWin 4.11, and am now facing the same old same old, two
>years further into obsolescence oblivion--namely, problems with
>exporting the files to a word processor used by someone other than
>the stalwart members of this list. 
>
>In particular, it's highly desirable that I be able to export to
>MS Word format for my agent and/or WordStar for my
>collaborator. (My publisher's typesetting bureau can still cope with
>XyWrite files, which is a blessing.)

IMHO the best way to get a Xy file ready for someone who can't read a
plain text file and has to use MS Word is to load it up in MS Word and
then save it. Of course you need MS Word for this -- but if I were in
your shoes I'd just take the plunge. It's actually quite powerful and
you might find it useful down the road. You could probably also find
an old version that'd suffice at an online auction or someplace like
that.

>The native XyWin W4W44T.DLL output filter for WinWord (09-02-93,
>89840 bytes) only goes up to Version 2.0. I exported one of my
>chapters using it, then peeked at the chapter with Lotus Magellan and
>WordPad (I don't have Word available on any system here). Both showed
>the same thing--a badly corrupted text with extra spaces inserted at
>seemingly random intervals (from every tenth character or so to every
>25th character or so).

My main point: it may be corrupt but I'm not sure you can really expect
either Magellan or WordPad to make sense of a Word file. In fact I'm
pretty sure even a good Word file would look something like you
describe. It's just a dirty application! If you don't think it's
worth buying Word to do the job, send a few pages of it to the guy and
see if he can read it.

Rafe T.
raphaelt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.ray-field.com