Re: text to cmd line/ascii to ansi/.Mac-Win blues

["Yo Intl. YK" rrr@xxxxxxxx]

At 10:28 PM 11/5/01 -0500, Bill Troop wrote:
>2. What is a foolproof method of complete conversion
>from XyWrite ASCII to Win ANSI and back?

I wonder if there IS a foolproof conversion, considering that some
characters do not EXIST in the other set.
The two obvious ways (which you surely know) are a) to make a
search/replace list yourself, and b) use a conversion utility (lots of free
programs that do this, how about the excellent "NoteTab" editor for example?).

>3. Any advice about conversion from MacASCII to
>Win ANSI or DOS Ascii? Keeping in mind that the
>text makes use of Mac ASCII characters like fi and
>fl which must be translated into something in Windows/DOS

Same as above. MacLink is probably the best conversion utility, but plenty
of Mac programs allow to save in DOS text format. But you still run into
characters that don't match.

>(the eventual idea being to deconstruct fi, fl, ff, ffi, and ffl
>into their constituent letters for editing purposes).

Sounds like you'll have to mess with a printer file...

>of to make numerous corrections which were not
>reflected in the XyWrite files, as I made them directly
>in Pagemaker. Oh, woe! What stupidity!

Ouch...

>search/replaces, but am not sure that the weird graphics
>characters that come up for fi/fl, for instance, will
>translate properly.

Make a list of them, print them out, and check the DOS equivalent.
If you give me a fax number, I can fax you a side-by-side list of Mac
ASCII/DOS ASCII.


-- Rene von Rentzell, Tokyo