Re: Concerning MAILPREP in XYWWWEB115.

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "M.W. Poirier"  on Sun, 26
Oct 2003 15:07:25 -0400 (EDT)


> I wonder if I might make a suggestion. Not all of us write strictly
> in English. And so, it would be nice if MAILPREP were able to handle
> accented letters, in the following manner: "e acute gets translated
> to "e'" and "e grave" to "'e", and so on. C cedilla becomse C, etc.
> As well, it would be nice if symbols such are the COPYRIGHT symbol,
> 838, comes out as Copyright, etc.

Hmmm. I guess what you're talking about is the conversions performed by
XyWbMail.PRN, which translate "e acute" to plain "e" etc (rather than, as you
suggest, something like "e'"). Correct?

Let's check first to see what PRN you're using with MAILPREP. On the CMline,
command:
 REGEDIT/N MailPrep_PRNfile
If it's XyWbMail.PRN, then CAll it into a window.

A couple of points: 1) You don't have to use XyWbMail.PRN, you can use a
different PRN file. 2) You can _change_ XyWbMail.PRN to anything more to your
liking. XyWbMail.PRN is specifically designed to *suppress* high-order
characters, so that the result file is exclusively in range 32-127. If you
want to retain that principle, but change the way characters are converted or
translated into low-order characters, well, just change the various
specifications! For example, where it says:
 [a acute]=a
just change it to
 [a acute]=a'
or change
 [Cedilla]=C
to
 [Cedilla]=C,
Then SAve the PRN file. Easier done than said. If you don't want to mess up
my lovely PRN file, then make a copy of it, change the copy, and don't forget
to *change* the REGistry variable to:
 MailPrep_PRNfile=[YourNewFileName].PRN
and SAve the altered REG file too! Also, make sure the new PRNfilename is part
of the PP: spec, per Steps 1 and 2 below...

But suppose you want to assume that every Email client in the world uses
Windows ANSI, and you don't object to sending MicroSludge (as Patricia would
bludgeon it, in this instance very accurately) non-standard Windows-only ANSI
1252 charset (CodePage) files to everyone (they might object, but what the
hell). In that case, set the REGistry variable "MailPrep_PRNfile" to a
non-invasive PRN file like, say, GENERIC.PRN (part of the standard Xy4-DOS
installation, and also available at
http://www.xywrite.com/printer/generic.zip). Then:

1) Make sure GENERIC.PRN is one of the PRN files you load in your SETTINGS.DFL
PP: setting (increment the value of PP:# by 1 too, if you _add_ GENERIC.PRN to
the list!).

2) Quit and Restart Xy if necessary, to register the additional PRN file with
XyWrite.

3) Run MAILPREP against your source file

4) Run XY2ANSI against the MAILPREP result file FO.TMP. That will
convert high-order chars to ANSI. SAve FO.TMP! ZAP26 it, to get rid
of the terminal EOF character, which will show in your transmitted Email if you
don't (MAILPREP automatically does a ZAP26 on FO.TMP, but you just changed
FO.TMP and SAved it, which restored the terminal Ascii-26). Mail it. Done.

> It would also be useful if MAILPREP
> were able to replace italicized script with the underline symbol,
> _thusly_. Can this be done in future releases of U2?

No. Email files don't display italics -- so why compose Emails with
XyWrite-only conventions? That's your problem, and easy enough to fix. This
kind of manual command would make the replacement:
 cv |OOO|_| <==where "O" is the OR wildcard
You should always strip formatting first, if you're sending a formatted file as
Email (run DAF or FMTSTRIP against the source before starting the
Email prep process). I write Emails with underscores or asterisks or UPPERCASE
ab initio, to draw attention to specific words etc.



>  In the interim, is there a modification that I might make to achieve
>  the same objective? I know a bit of XPL code, but I am far from being
>  an expert at this sort of thing.
>
>  M.W. Poirier
>  MONTREAL, Quebec





If you

 things

think what you're realing talking about is the conversion of ASCII to ANSI
(from CP 437 or 850 to 1252 or 8859-1). If you want to make that conversion
before you send mail that you've composed in XyWrite, it's easy enough to do.
This may be niggling, but let me point out that your message is encoded:
 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
which, theoretically anyway, should specifically forbid the transmission of any
character over 127 (since US-ASCII is a 7-bit set). Or, are you saying that
high-order chars don't display at all (maybe because of the "US-ASCII" label)?
Anyway!

Here's how I'd handle it:

Compose the message. Before running MAILPREP, run XY2ANSI. That will
convert any high-order chars over 127. Then run MAILPREP.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------