malloy@nprdc.arpa (Sean Malloy) (01/02/90)
In article <75208@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Vampire <gaynor@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes: > Actually, I find this another reason to hate IBMs, and the users who >have no concept of proportional fonts. I can't count the number of times that >I've downloaded a file to find that the person who wrote it used spaces >rather than tabs to line things up, or hit a <cr> at the end of each -line- >rather than at the end of each paragraph. At least, if you're going to use ><cr>s to designate an eol, then use 2 <cr>s for end-of-paragraph. <sigh> But _which_ proportional font do you mean? If you pick a different font, the spacing's going to be different, and it's going to mangle any nifty line-length adjustments that were tailored to the width tables of a specific font. And even the 'same' font between different systems/printers can have different width tables, so the line length is really going to be machine-specific. If you're downloading a generic ASCII text file, you have to assume that it was created using a monospaced font. Using tabs for alignment? Is everything going to be lined up conveniently on a tab stop, then? But you can adjust the tab stops, can't you? Well, then, consider that a generic ASCII file doesn't have any provision for describing the tab stops, so they are going to be the default eight-character intervals -- and the times that the text will cooperate to line up at convenient separations for fixed tab stops is are rare, so you wind up doing alignment with spaces. Line breaks in generic ASCII files are dependent on whatever the creating system chooses to use to terminate lines with. For example, when I download text files from UNIX to my MS-DOS machine as part of arcfiles, I have to add <cr> characters to the end of each line so that the lines don't display like this on the screen because UNIX uses a <lf> character to terminate lines, whereas MS-DOS expects <cr><lf>. If I download text files directly, the conversion is made by my comm software, but archived files don't get converted. If you put information on precisely what font and width table and tab settings and line terminators into the file, what you have is no longer a generic ASCII file, but a file for a word processor. Your basic problem is that you insist on using a word processor for a task that wants a text editor. But it seems to me that your real problem is that you expect everyone else to do everything possible to make things convenient for you, regardless of how inconvenient it is for them. Have you ever considered what happens when you load a text file with <cr> only at the end of a paragraph into a text editor with a limited line length? People creating files on different systems, using different software, are going to have the files formatted differently, and bitching about how inconvenient the generic ASCII formatting that makes the file readable on any system is to you using one specific system and word processing program is sour grapes. Sean Malloy | ". . . They always have an air Navy Personnel Research & Development Center | of cheap melodrama about them." San Diego, CA 92152-6800 | "You will find, my dear, that malloy@nprdc.navy.mil | _true_ melodrama _never_ comes | cheap."
daveg@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Dave Guggisberg) (01/04/90)
>I wanted to take this opportunity to point out that type is not the >only text viewer on the PC, and in fact is quite probably the >poorest choice for the job. What do you do if want to read and >edit more than one screenful at a time? Several possibilities lept >immediately to mind and I wanted to see what other people came up >with as well. Hi Terry I use Vernon Berg's List program. I think the latest is 7.2a (or is it 6.2a?). Try it. You'll like it. Its shareware by one of the best shareware authors. Should be easy to find on you favorite BBS or simtel. Dave Guggisberg daveg@cv.hp.com