dgp0@bunny.gte.com (Dennis Pratt) (12/21/89)
Mr. James Scott writes that the solution of removing paragraph marks at
the end of a line is to to use the "change" command to replace ^p
(paragraph mark) with a space.
That's how I do it, but what a PAIN!! It takes me hours to convert a
document taken off a line oriented system to a WORD document. I want
headings to be marked as headings. I want indents to be marked as tabs,
not spaces. I want paragraph breaks at paragraphs, not at line breaks. I
want extraneous spaces removed.
My biggest problem is taking documents out of Dialog and making them WORD
readable.
So, how about it MicroSoft?? Why not improve WORD in order to have it
efficiently alter the clunky stuff we pull out of these network services
into beautiful WORD documents?
That would be one heck of a product!!
Dennis
The price of freedom...gdavis@primate.wisc.edu (Gary Davis) (12/21/89)
From article <361@hgwells.GTE.COM>, by dgp0@bunny.gte.com (Dennis Pratt): > Mr. James Scott writes that the solution of removing paragraph marks at > the end of a line is to to use the "change" command to replace ^p > (paragraph mark) with a space. > > That's how I do it, but what a PAIN!! It takes me hours to convert a > document taken off a line oriented system to a WORD document. I want > headings to be marked as headings. I want indents to be marked as tabs, > not spaces. I want paragraph breaks at paragraphs, not at line breaks. I > want extraneous spaces removed. > > My biggest problem is taking documents out of Dialog and making them WORD > readable. > > So, how about it MicroSoft?? Why not improve WORD in order to have it > efficiently alter the clunky stuff we pull out of these network services > into beautiful WORD documents? > > That would be one heck of a product!! > That product is already here: Nisus. It has powerful grep and macro facilities which are easy to set so that you can do the kind of formatting you need with a single menu selection. You can even arrange to have your headings come out bold faced and so forth. I can't say for sure that it can handle Dialog documents perfectly (I'm not familiar with the format), but I've made macros to take usenet stuff and give me back clean Mac text with the subject line in bold and the author in italics. I have other macros which can convert text with xroff formatting to Mac WYSIWYG, styles, symbols, superscripts, etc. Another possibility is to use HyperCard to process the text. You'll have to give it some time to work, of course, but it's actually faster than you might expect and you don't have to sit over it. You could have it add Word RTF commands into the text for subsequent importing into Word. I have a simple XFCN I wrote which speeds up part of the reformatting, such as replacing carriage returns with spaces, removing extra spaces and such. Gary Davis > Dennis > The price of freedom...
barry@playfair.STANFORD.EDU (barry) (12/22/89)
In article <361@hgwells.GTE.COM> dgp0@bunny.gte.com (Dennis Pratt) writes: >Mr. James Scott writes that the solution of removing paragraph marks at >the end of a line is to to use the "change" command to replace ^p >(paragraph mark) with a space. > >That's how I do it, but what a PAIN!! It takes me hours to convert a >document taken off a line oriented system to a WORD document. I want >headings to be marked as headings. I want indents to be marked as tabs, >not spaces. I want paragraph breaks at paragraphs, not at line breaks. I >want extraneous spaces removed. > The shareware program Add/Strip (available on sumex and elsewhere) does a very good and flexible job of preparing text files for input to word processors or other Mac programs. You might want to give it a try. Barry Eynon barry@playfair.stanford.edu -ARPA ...!decwrl!shasta!playfair!barry -USENET