colinr@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (Colin Rose) (04/02/91)
Greetings one and all.
EXPORTING FORMATTED TEXT
In Hypercard, you can format text: ie whole fields or text
within fields can be specified to be italic, bold, fontsize etc.
That is GREAT, but how do I export this information to a
MS Word file, or other.
It seems Hypercard will only write to ASCII-style files,
which cannot accept such formatting information (bold, italic etc).
If this is so, it would seem to be a very silly ommission from
the upgrade. Any ideas ?
Colin Rose
Dept. of Economics
University of Sydney
colinr@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
*************************nobody@blia.sharebase.com (Nobody at all) (04/03/91)
In article <1991Apr2.081825.17264@metro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> colinr@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (Colin Rose) writes: >Greetings one and all. > > EXPORTING FORMATTED TEXT > > In Hypercard, you can format text: ie whole fields or text >within fields can be specified to be italic, bold, fontsize etc. >That is GREAT, but how do I export this information to a >MS Word file, or other. > > It seems Hypercard will only write to ASCII-style files, >which cannot accept such formatting information (bold, italic etc). >If this is so, it would seem to be a very silly ommission from >the upgrade. Any ideas ? > Word processors use 'style-sheets' to ease formatting ... you know ... title line is centered, BOLD, font X, size Y chapter names are BOLD, left justified, new page, sections are space above/below, underlined body text is filled (justified) with margins x,y enumerated lists use hanging intents and on it goes. I normally use Word 4.0, but found quickly that custom style sheets MUST be imported from other documents, so ... for this kind of problem, I've switched to PageMaker 4.0 which allows one to add style sheets to the application itself. Knowing that style sheet XYZ has BOLD, font X, size Y, one can export ASCII text in this manner: open file TheFIle write "<XYZ>" to TheFile write return to TheFile -- items henceforthe are formatted by the definition of -- the XYZ style sheet .. .. -- when done, revert to normal "unformatted control" write "<no style>" to TheFile write return to TheFile In this manner, I am using HC to acquire line items for custom invoice printing in which the HC data is PLACED into the form. ------- J. Beard jeffb@sharebase.com
leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue) (04/04/91)
Other people have more or less said this, but just to make it explicit: One way to export styled text from HC is to use of the text-only markup file formats like RTF or SGML. I think that somewhere in the byzantine Microsoft documentation is a guide to RTF format. Of course, you still have to decide how to map the styled text in your fields into this format. That process should be amenable to standard scripting techniques, the exact details of which are left as an exercise for the reader :-) -Bill Leue leue@crd.ge.com
eallen@mercury.sybase.com (Ed Allen) (04/12/91)
In article <18203@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> leue@galen.crd.ge.com (Bill Leue) writes: >Other people have more or less said this, but just to make it explicit: >One way to export styled text from HC is to use of the text-only >markup file formats like RTF or SGML. I think that somewhere in the >byzantine Microsoft documentation is a guide to RTF format. > >Of course, you still have to decide how to map the styled text in >your fields into this format. That process should be amenable to >standard scripting techniques, the exact details of which are left >as an exercise for the reader :-) > >-Bill Leue >leue@crd.ge.com To get you started there is an RTF stack for old HyperCard that helped you with writing RTF codes into a field with the text and then exporting an RTF file. I found it in the BMUG software library, awhile back. You could develop this to read the style info from your styled text field and compose the RTF field. Ed Allen Eallen@sybase.com m a k e t h e l i n e c o u n t er happy.