--- Forwarded Message from "Richard Kunst" <[log in to unmask]> ---
>Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
>From: "Richard Kunst" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: "Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum" <[log in to unmask]>
>Cc: <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: RE: #6379 WordStar Conversion
>Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 12:10:10 -0500
>Importance: Normal
>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
------------------
John,
It sounds like you've done all the right things and been very thorough. I'm
baffled by why the Portuguese accented characters are not converted
correctly by WordPerfect, WordPro, or WordPort. You don't say this in so
many words, but I'm guessing that WordStar 4 was for DOS and you wish to
convert it to Windows code page 1252 (essentially a superset of Latin-1 (ISO
8859-1). Is that correct? I'm confused why MacLink Plus entered the
picture, since the Mac Roman encoding adds a 4th encoding variation to the 3
above, further muddying the issue....
The original WordStar document perhaps used the ordinary US DOS IBM Code
Page 437 encoding (which does not have full support for all Portuguese
accented letters, or even all upper-case Spanish accented letters). So it is
just as likely that it used a different DOS code page, probably 850, which
is the DOS default for just about all Roman-character locales except the
U.S. and U.K. It clearly used a *standard*, rather than ad hoc, encoding, or
MS Word would not have been able to convert it correctly.
In a very long document, being able to convert the footnotes correctly is
probably more valuable than the accented letters. If worse comes to worst,
you could convert the accents by hand. There are at most about 20 accented
letters in Portuguese (vowels a,e,i,o,u with acute, grave, and circumflex;
n-tilde, c-cedilla, and u-diaresis), in upper and lower case, or 40
altogether. If WordPerfect and the others simply converted to the *wrong*
characters, rather than stripping those characters out entirely, then it
would take about an hour or so to do a global Find-and-Replace in any word
processor that includes the notes in the "Replace All" process to handle the
maximum 40 incorrectly converted characters. (Perhaps not every vowel can
have a grave, acute, or circumflex accent, so the total is probably ewer.)
It might be a little tricky to spot the incorrect conversions in proper
names, but a Portuguese spell-checker would be helpful there too.
I have generally had good luck with such conversions. If you want, please
send me the original file as an
e-mail attachment and I will try my hand as well at converting both the
accented characters and the footnotes.
Best wishes,
Rick Kunst
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of LLTI-Editor
> Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 1:26 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: #6379 WordStar Conversion
>
>
> --- Forwarded Message from "John Fahey" <[log in to unmask]> ---
>
> >From: "John Fahey" <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: <[log in to unmask]>
> >Subject: WordStar Conversion
> >Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 14:39:45 -0700
>
> I am trying to help a professor convert a text from WordStar 4 to
> Microsoft Word. This document contains numerous accent marks used
> with names
> from Brazilian Portuguese and also a large number of lengthy
> footnotes which
> are essential to the text. I have used the converter available
> for Microsoft
> Word 2000 and it correctly converts the accent marks but it eliminates all
> of the footnotes. I have tried converting with Lotus Ami Pro 97, Corel
> WordPerfect 8.0, and a utility called Wordport, all of which keep the
> footnotes but do not convert the accented characters.
> I have also tried with Maclink plus which freezes when I attempt to
> convert this document. I called Dataviz, the company that makes
> MacLink Plus
> in addition to similar utilities for Windows, and was told that their
> products do not convert footnotes from Wordstar. One possibility is to
> manipulate the text with a newer version of Worstar which unfortunately we
> do not have and is no longer available.
> Does anyone know of a solution for converting from Wordstar 4 while
> retaining both accented characters and footnotes?
>
> Thank you,
> John Fahey
> Liberal Arts Center for Instructional Technology,
> University of Texas at El Paso
> [log in to unmask]
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