Re: Concerning MAILPREP in XYWWWEB115.

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

 Thank you for taking the time to reply to my query. 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, and a few lines to
 the MAILPREP programme to handle the italicized words in the
 text.

 Again, many thanks.

 M.W. Poirier

-----
On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, Robert Holmgren wrote:

> ** 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
> -----------------------------
>
>