Re: Document conversion

[Dorothy Day day@xxxxxxxx]

On Mon, 18 Sep 2000 jr_fox@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> Dorothy Day wrote:
>
> > The NBWin filters are Wordport and quite up to date. Current offerings
> > include
> >
> > MSWord for DOS v. 3,4,5,5.5
> > MSWord for Windows 2,6,7,8(Word97)
> > WP for DOS 5,5.1,5.2,6.0,6.1
> > WP (Corel) 7,8
> > NB DOS 2,3,4
> > NBWin
> > Signature
> > Xy 2,3/3+,4
> > (& lots of less in-demand formats)
> >
> > Unfortunately, the RTF filter is still under development, so you're
> > limited to listed formats till that comes out.
> >
>
> That's interesting to find out, and makes perfect sense. ACI seems to have
> this document conversion niche all to themselves these days.
>
> I don't know how the modules behave within NB, but I have been quite
> underwhelmed with the full-blown WordPort product. I first bought the
> 16-bit version, and upgraded that through its final version. On my system,
> this is usually run under Win-OS/2 (a sub-system of OS/2, which runs most
> 16-bit WIN programs rather well, so long as they predate the advent of MS
> going to Win32S extensions greater than ver. 1.25 -- which is not a relevant
> factor in this case, per ACI).  On certain kinds of conversion, this GPFs
> so much as to be useless. I have tried it under _real_ Win 3.11, with much
> the same results.
>
> Next, I bought a license for their 32-bit version (current release, as of
> about 6 months ago), which I run under NT-4. It GPFs significantly less,
> but the conversions aren't any better. My conversations about this with ACI
> have been less than satisfactory, in terms of explanation or results.
>
> A major reason why I bought this product -- besides the fact that there
> doesn't seem to be any other option at this point -- was to be able to
> convert formatted documents back and forth between XY4 and later versions of
> Word, primarily the version in MS. OFC. '97. Curiously enough, it was the
> conversions from XY into WORD '97 that would crash WordPort. (Perhaps the
> fact that WordPort would mistake many WORD 6, 7, 8, or '97 doc.s for RTF had
> something to do with this . . . ?). Converting the other way, into XY-3 or
> XY-4, had no crash consequences, it just yielded a _way_ over-formatted XY
> file, in which a great deal of the conversion was quite wrong. I can
> understand and overlook fonts not matching up, but the rest ? I would like
> to be able to say that it's better than nothing, but am not sure if I can
> even go that far. Suffice to say that I haven't been able to get that much
> practical use out of it, and would need a great deal of convincing before
> purchasing any upgrades.
>
>

(Sorry for the long quoting.)

To test the import/export of Word docs, I tried a couple. One was a
journal article, apparently two-column, but clearly not, since each way
I opened it or saved it (in Word 2000 and some other products, including
NBWin) garbled the columns, though not anything else. Maybe it was a
fast-save in Word 97.

The second was a 45K paper by one of my students done in Word 2000.
NBWin declared an error in the file format, but did not GPF. I opened it
in Word 97 and saved it as Word 97 (now 31K), then opened it in NBWin.
No problem, and considerably less tag-bloat than your experience with
Wordport, or mine with Word for Word/Adobe File Utilities. I did have to
delete a couple of MD and OF tags to get it back to its original look,
but it's pretty clean. Saved that as a Word 97 file (now 14K) and opened
it in Word 2000. It looks pretty much the same as the original,
including end-notes. Saved that as Word 2000 (I don't seem to have a
save-as Word 97 in Word 2000), and NBWin again objected.

So, it appears that Word 2000 documents won't import directly into NBWin
(with current filters), but Word 97 files import pretty cleanly, and
NBWin saves to Word97 (or lower) pretty cleanly. There *is* some
extraneous tagging (mostly tab, margin, and font), but much less than
most conversions I've seen.

My experience is that tables don't convert very well. Automatic
numbering converts for 2-3 levels, but breaks down with outlines of
greater depth.

I'd guess that a lot of converting and reconverting of the same document
will only invite trouble, so if you're co-authoring with a colleague,
keep the shared manuscript as simple as possible till the content is
fairly set, then add the polish.

If you're just submitting to a journal that insists on Word or Word
Perfect, stick with the most widely used versions when you export (Word
(97 or lower, WP/Corel 8 or lower), and let the editor handle that--it
will cause no problems at the other end. Many authors just submet plain
text.

If someone else is sending you a document, ask for the more widely-used
version, not Word 2000 or WP/Corel 9. And hope that NB gets the RTF
filter done soon, to give a more universal format for document sharing.
(Even with RTF, Microsoft can't resist tinkering, and has a
non-backwardly compatible version...)

   Dorothy

*****
Dorothy Day
School of Library & Information Science
Indiana University
day@xxxxxxxx
*****

	"He also surfs who only sits and waits."