RE: Xy-Word Conversion

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

On the more general issue of formatting, publishers (in my experience)
generally want a file with the least possible formatting (just itals for
book and journal titles, unassimilated foreign words, and the like). Some
sort of a tag (in nonprinting comments, which generally come over
through most conversion filters), indicating what level a particular
heading is (because that often depends on factual meaning that the author
is best qualified to specify), is also useful. They generally do want
foot- or endnotes in the word processor's footnote capability (because
otherwise it's too fatally easy for the notes to get out of sync with the
superior numbers in the text, and strightening that out is a nightmare).
This minimal formatting can be transferred using the Hungarian filters
and the procedure Robert recommended (which was a revelation to me some
months ago). WordPort has certain quirks: it refuses to convert em and en
dashes and smart quotes correctly, and attempts to call the errors to the
publisher's attention have proved fruitless. If you're really doing
minimal format, and not using such frills, that won't matter. (I tend to
use them, because I don't trust some of the johnny-come-lately layout
artists to know the difference.)
	Ironically, of course, using styles would be much the best way to format
files. But none of the conversion filters, even, say, from Word to and
from WordPerfect, convert styles correctly. A great pity, because styles
are so easy to use in XyW and so horrendously kludgy in the Twords. And
of course Rene's remark about tagged formats is right on target.
Patricia