dgp0@bunny.gte.com (Dennis Pratt) (12/23/89)
(Mr. Chuq Von Rospach described some tools (McSink, Macify, Add/Strip) to
make converting from line oriented formats to MS Word easier.)
Thank you for your careful overview of these options. I'll certainly try
these packages out!
(Mr. Von Rospach notes that taking "hours" to convert the files seems
overly long.)
I may be bringing in much larger and more complex files than you
normally work with, and I may be attempting to convert them more
drastically.
For example, I frequently use Dialog to search several databases. After
removing extraneous hits, I want to make the file more readable for
corporate strategists. Some of the paragraphs are easily identified with
^p^p and are readily convertable, as per Mr. Von Rospach's directions (I
prefer "dfdf" as a marker). Other paragraphs, however, are not as easily
identified. It is the exceptions that consume so much time. Furthermore,
many of the paragraphs of information are not important (or very
important) to my audience and therefore ought to be displayed in a smaller
(larger) font, boldness, etc. Such paragraph definition reformatting
takes quite a while.
(Mr. Von Rospach writes: "There are already good utilities to do these
kinds of conversions, so why try to wedge a special purpose function into
an already complex program? It's one of those things that really ought to
be a separate program. ... if you need this kind of capability, you ought
to be using a program designed to do it.")
I've really appreciated MSWord including an outliner with its word
processor -- so much so that I no longer use MORE. They've also included
a spelling checker and numerous other, previously separate, utility
programs.
When is a functional capability a separate program or a logical extension
of another program? As a naive user (relative to Mr. Von Rospach) I
appreciate a software product that allows me to easily accomplish my
application goal. While MSWord fills part of my application need, I find
it extremely cumbersome to take messages off Unixmail, Dialog, Telemail, etc.
and convert them to MSWord format with the appropriate paragraph type
specifications. Since I do this frequently, with rather large files, and
require a large number of formatting changes, I have a high need for this
type of capability. For me, this "separate program" is an integral part
of the application that I am using Word for.
Certainly the addition of such functionality is at least as redundant for
some users as were a spelling checker and a outliner. Several individual
programs were available that offered good spell checking and outlining.
However, at some point, MicroSoft designers decided to bring that
functionality within the Word environment.
I believe that with intelligent analysis, a software designer could derive
good rules for reformatting various text formats. I, personally, would
not like to build my own macros -- something a more sophisticated user
might enjoy. I would also prefer the reformatting to occur within MSWord,
especially if it allowed me to automate the redefiniton of individual
paragraph types.
Perhaps other naive users would welcome assistance in changing formatting.
There may be others out there who do a lot of this and who don't have the
benefit of the information provided by Mr. Von Rospach. That is an
economic decision for MicroSoft. I only suggest they investigate its
potential.
Dennis
The price of freedom...