Re: Concerning MAILPREP in XYWWWEB115.

["M.W. Poirier" poirmw@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll try it. I trust that the
modifications you suggest to the printer file will not affect
other things...? By the way, are you suggesting something
different from what you suggested this morning when you speak
of xy2ansi?

As for the underlining, well, academics like to see things appear
the way they should appear, ...even in an e-mail message, and so,
if a book title is italicized, then it should show it even in an
e-mail message. And the convention is to do something like this:

Nicolo Machiavelli, _The Discourses_, (London: ....

This is maybe a bit fussy for you, but that's pretty much how it
is amongst the academics I correspond with these days.

Again, thanks.

M.W. Poirier

----
On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Robert Holmgren wrote:

> ** Reply to message from "M.W. Poirier"  on Mon, 27
> Oct 2003 08:36:03 -0400 (EDT)
>
>
> > I thought
> > that there might be a simpler way to do this by adding a small
> > table of authorities to the MAILPREP programme to convert the
> > accented letters to their ANSI equivalents
>
> You sound disappointed. I thought that the procedure for changing XyWbMail.PRN
> that I described was pretty simple -- much simpler done than described.
>
> Converting ASCII chars to ANSI in a really rigorous fashion is *enormously*
> complicated -- just ask Manuel Castelao. He and I together developed both
> ANSI2XY and XY2ANSI (bidirectional character converters) as well as an ANSIfied
> XyWrite (everything displays and operates in ANSI, not ASCII). It took a
> coon's age. About 3 weeks! But now they're part of U2. It is *so easy* to
> make the conversions now. Have you tried? This is not difficult:
> ANSI2XY, XY2ANSI. Done.
>
> > and a few lines to the MAILPREP programme to handle
> > the italicized words in the text.
>
> My main objection is that it's a narrow and parochial change, to oblige a
> single user. I personally wouldn't want it -- I dunno about others. And what
> about MDUL? MDBO? FR FU BU FL SO RV BR SD SU IT BI DN DB DU DL DR DV DD DS DI
> DO IN IB IU IL IR and IV? What conventions (_*|<>! etc) will we adopt for
> those MoDes? This is not trivial.
>
> But look, if you want personalized results, just write your own little XPL
> routine, which calls the various "canned" U2 routines in proper sequence,
> adding just one "manual" command of your own, before everything else, to
> convert  to "_". It's so easy. If you don't know how, ask. Then you
> enjoy the one-keystroke satisfaction you crave.
>
> -----------------------------
> Robert Holmgren
> holmgren@xxxxxxxx
> -----------------------------
>
>