Print Page - My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?

Welcome to Techsurvivors => Tech => Topic started by: gunug on July 10, 2010, 08:46:48 AM

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 10, 2010, 08:46:48 AM

I'm editing and working on a large manuscript and I'm finding it difficult to use anything other than Textedit (this is a RTF file) and have things open in a consistent manner. I'm using some Chinese and other foreign languages and if I open it in any other word processor (ABIWORD, OPEN OFFICE, NEOOFFICE) the characters themselves seem to migrate and evolve in directions that I don't find desirable! I'm going to try to paste in small piece (a quotation) that includes foreign text and I wonder what I'll see:

QUOTE

A kōan (pronounced /ˈkoʊ.ɑːn/; Chinese: 公案; pinyin: gōng-àn; Korean: gong'an; Vietnamese: công án) is a fundamental part of the history and lore of Zen Buddhism. It consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but may be intuited. One widely known kōan is "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" (oral tradition attributed to Hakuin Ekaku, 1686–1769, considered a reviver of the kōan tradition in Japan). The word koan, the name by which practice is known to the West, comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dan

This is almost letter perfect (the original is a Wiki page) but if I open it in other programs I lose most of the foreign characters and even have the word "kōan" change to "kan" which must refer to the place where I live! Is this to do with the various foreign language support files that I either didn't load or removed with a utility program? Can I add things back or simply do something so that everything is seen the way Firefox seems to be seeing it? It this something that I need to buy "Popchar X" or can I hack around in the innards (preferences and things) of the OS of something. I'm using 10.4.11 generally but I'd like some sort of fidelity when I open it up in an application in 10.5 or even 10.6 (although I don't use it as a rule). Maybe if I were to generate it as XML or HTML?

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Paddy on July 10, 2010, 08:59:51 AM

John, if you don't have the foreign language support files for the particular languages, I suspect that the OS does its best, but doesn't manage to match things exactly, which is why you're seeing oddball changes.

I'm not sure if you can add things back with Pacifist, or whether it would be easier to just reinstall the OS over the existing. See the third screen shot about Pacifist here: http://pacifist.en.softonic.com/mac - which is what makes me wonder if it will work or not. Worth a try though.

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 10, 2010, 09:17:51 AM

I'm not sure it was always Pacifist (seems there is a different program as well) but maybe a partial reinstall or a "clean" one would be an answer. It is the OS I think because notice variations when I open the same page in Windows XP and I also remember a facility called "code page" back in MS-DOS days that was supposed to fix this sort of thing!

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Shades of Gray on July 10, 2010, 12:56:03 PM

For non-English languages, I have found Mellel and Nisus Writer Pro are by far the best. NWP saves default in .rtf, and Mellel can, although it has its own XML package format. Nisus is more intuitive. Both are rock solid. I have never had either of them crash in the many years I have used them.

(Or have I misunderstood your question?)

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Reiddm on July 10, 2010, 03:24:39 PM

QUOTE(gunug @ Jul 10 2010, 01:46 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I'm reading you correctly, you might need to tell the browser what font you want to use, what I mean is basic html? I use the old AppleWorks 6, running 10.6 on my MacPro and save it in the text form, I only do basic html, never got past that, the instructions is found here:
http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/, that is if I'm understanding what your question is?

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Xairbusdriver on July 10, 2010, 04:02:00 PM

I don't think he's had any crashes caused by this problem. Nor did I see anything about web publishing.

The problem, as I understand it, is different apps/OSs displaying different characters for the same character code. If you have removed Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese language support (from OS X, I presume), you are not going to get the same thing Word displays (even with the Mac version).

Do the edited files display properly once sent back to Word?

It would appear that there are three basic problems:

You may also be slightly confused, I know I was, in exactly what "RTF" is:

QUOTE(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format)

The Rich Text Format (often abbreviated RTF) is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation in 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange.

Most word processors are able to read and write some versions of RTF. There are several different revisions of RTF specification and portability of files will depend on what version of RTF is being used. RTF specifications are changed and published with major Microsoft Word/Microsoft Office versions.

It should not be confused with enriched text (mimetype "text/enriched" of RFC 1896) or its predecessor Rich Text (mimetype "text/richtext" of RFC 1341 and 1521) which are completely different specifications.

I think this site may express things perfectly clearly for the rest of us:<Microsoft RTF Specification Nightmare> However, the wiki article specifically mentions abiword as a great alternative to any version of Word®. It is open-source so very inexpensive, as in free, but the OS X version (2.4.5) has not changed since <2005>!

So, if you insist on or must keep mixing Word into the group, you should expect to see variances in the display. Period. And reason for not using plain text? No 'styling,' of course, but any text editor should be ables to read/write the file without making display errors. You'd still require the language support files, of course.

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 10, 2010, 07:29:37 PM

QUOTE

(Or have I misunderstood your question?)

Shades of Gray, it seems as if you have anticipated a question I hadn't thought to ask yet!

Thank you for the recommend! I don't know whether it's still available but I think that Texedit; a venerable postcard ware (meaning the cost was pegged at the cost of a postcard and postage) program was up there with the others at one time. You could edit RTF files and read/write HTML (probably XML as well) and it convert to a number of other popular programs.

Pacifist might have indeed been the program I'm remembering; I'll look around a bit but assume you are correct!

Reiddm, Paddy, XABD: I will try to see whether doing a clean install or whatever is "the" reliable solution; have to copy out an image of the system on the drive onto an external drive and try doing a clean install on it to see if this works. Might find something else that is wonky or will not work! XABD, I did now what RTF is but it doesn't frighten me all that much

and I first noticed the problem I am seeing with Word and Abiword and decided it had to be a support problem and possibly shows up best by a lack of foreign characters when I display using whatever font I should chose!

I do have and interesting but possibly unanswerable question: Is the mechanism that determines "what" (or whether) something is displayed on a screened page in terms of characters is also what locks the page from displaying images or text that is dragged onto it from a different place? Wait, I know better; the screen as well as whatever else you see in files is actually in a file or in a buffer and it's probably just locked by a read only flag!

Tex-Edit "Pro" - At least the proto OS X Text-Edit was, I think, postcardware. This is the website for the new and improved version:

http://www.tex-edit.com/

Wait, don't touch that dial: The original Tex-Edit and a lot of specific language "clones" are available for "free" (or so one assumes) on the website above.

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: krissel on July 11, 2010, 03:27:54 AM

TextWrangler might be of use, too. It's free.

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Xairbusdriver on July 11, 2010, 02:19:29 PM

TexEdit and Text Edit are two different programs, of course. The OS comes with TextEdit included. Tex-Edit is a rather old but still supported plain text editor, haven't used it in many years, however. Text Wrangler is a much better tool, IMHO.

However, your question contains multiple references to html and XML which are completely separate from the problem of displaying Word created RTF files in different apps/OSs. "html" as well as XML (and actually every other interpreted language) are simply plain text files. Some plain text editors may be able to also import/read/display and even write RTF. But that's a non plain-text function and not what text editors are normally used for. Likewise, RTF has no use as html,XML, PHP, etc. Thus, I am totally confused about what html, XML, etc. has to do with your original question.

No app, on any OS, will be able to display 'foreign' 'characters' unless that language (and its numerous scripts) are installed on that computer. And, since it can't display them, you cannot be sure that they will be written to the file correctly. You'll need to open the file in an OS that can recognize the 'character' codes for the 'characters' you first intended to be sure.

'Characters' are simply a number (usually hexedecimal) that are arranged in a specific order/format determined by the apps developer(s). If that format is 'open-source' or commonly used, any other developer can write a program to use that format for whatever purpose she might choose, maybe even for editing said files!

Of course, when one developer chooses to keep the format/order/modifiers/etc. secret, other developers have to 'reverse-engineer' the file to figure out what was originally intended. While MS does publish the format of RTF, it is not too speedy about it and may not actually publish absolutely all the details. That's their choice, of course...they invented it. But it does make it difficult for others to re-create the original 100% accurately. Thus, part of your seeing different things in different OSs and apps.

Of course, the language support issue seems to also be present. So, even if all your apps could work 100% accurately with any MS RTF output, you'd still not see the same things as the computer simply doesn't have the files that relate a 'character code' to any specific graphic that it uses to display that 'code.'

So, even if you have installed the latest Windows OS on your Mac, it still may have different language support files than the Mac OS. You cannot, therefore, expect to see the same display when using the same RTF on both OSs. No matter what app you use on each side. Period.

As I understand it, "RTF" is not magic. It can only create a file with characters that you can type from the keyboard. If you do not have language support for a particular 'character', you cannot type it into the file. Period. "RTF" is not simply another plain text file, it has special, non-printing codes that replicate certain styling functions such as bold, italic, underline, etc. and combinations of those. Nor does it have any concern for the language you might be using, it just takes the codes generated by the keyboard via the OS.

In my opinion, your choices, in order of simplicity, are:

However, this does not address the differences in languages on each OS

Finally, html, XML, etc. are completely separate and independent of the above issue and, IMHO, should be discussed in a different thread.

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 11, 2010, 09:57:44 PM

QUOTE

No app, on any OS, will be able to display 'foreign' 'characters' unless that language (and its numerous scripts) are installed on that computer. And, since it can't display them, you cannot be sure that they will be written to the file correctly. You'll need to open the file in an OS that can recognize the 'character' codes for the 'characters' you first intended to be sure.

I'm sure that this is correct, "now!" I have also seen and interesting problem with graphics and HTML that proves to me that the resources available on the computer are the key. This involved pasting information (a movie review about Hercules Poirot) and I first notice that I couldn't get the accents right in Poirot but I don't know what they really are because I could only see them on the webpage and not when I cut and paste the name itself. This puzzlement continued with me trying to cut and paste a picture of David Suchet into a RTFD document which wouldn't work until I actually had the picture itself on my desktop. If anyone has mileage that varies than please let me know!

This works, I assume because there is a supporting mechanism at TS (whatever they call the software running in the background here) and that doesn't exist in the OS 10.5 I'm using or in Textedit! Oh, this picture is from the David Suchet webpage at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Suchet

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 11, 2010, 10:15:14 PM

The secret "seems" to be that the DOS/Windows Code Page mechanism, or Unicode with HTML and XML, or the Foreign language support of MAC's has to be built into the operating system or you have to have a foreign language font or character set installed. Character sets are something programmers, at least, used to have to deal with!

Any comments from anyone who used to have to do programming or program support? If I'm all wet don't leave me hanging here!

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Xairbusdriver on July 12, 2010, 09:52:47 AM

Copying "text" from a web page is absolutely not the same as copying text from a word/text processor. HTML often use "entities" for special and accented 'characters.' If you simply do a "View source" (in Safari, for example), you should be able to se those. For example. The 'registered trademark' symbol has an "entities code" of "®". Most browsers will interpret that code correctly and display the symbol on whatever font the CSS or user has specified. But some symbols, especially accented ones, don't have these kinds "entities" and simply use "&" a number and a ";" to tell the browser what 'character' was intended. The important thing here is that I am talking about web browsers, not text/wordprocessors. Those are two distinctly different 'animals.' Copying web 'text' into a text/word processor will simply copy those "entities" and/or coded bits, they would have no idea what else to do with that text, which is, after all what the HTML/XML file really is.

That's why I was confused about the mentioning of copying web text in your question about character disply in word porcessors. The two 'displays' will hardly ever be the same when accented/special characters are used in either one.

And, obviuosly, no computer can display an accented/special character if it does not have the appropriate language support installed (usually that means a font family for that language).

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 12, 2010, 04:28:18 PM

Sounds like the mechanism is installable now and not built into the OS like in previous days; thanks ABD!

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Xairbusdriver on July 12, 2010, 06:45:31 PM

QUOTE

Sounds like the mechanism is installable now and not built into the OS

I still don't understand what "mechanism" you are talking about.

The only "mechanism" you need is the language support files which are installed when you install the OS. Of course, you can remove some of those (except for the ones required by the OS) with apps like Monolingual.

I'm not sure what you are referring to by "previous days" OS, either.

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: sokukodo on July 12, 2010, 07:06:44 PM

While I have nothing germane to contribute to the original question posed, I do have an observation on the example stated. Not all zen Buddhists use koans. In Japanese zen there are the "two schools", Rinzai and Soto; I was formally initiated into Soto zen 20 years ago ("Sokukodo" is my Buddhist name); Soto was founded by Dogen (13th century) who advocated "slow" enlightenment via zazen ("just sitting"); Rinzai is the branch that advocates "quick" enlightenment via koans. They are simply two paths leading to the same place (in fact, Dogen stated that the act of sitting, the practice of zazen, is enlightenment itself).

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 14, 2010, 04:39:42 PM

sokukodo - Thank you for the significant information; I'm awaiting my enlightenment "slowly!" :sitting & thinking, oh I'm not supposed to think!

:

XABD - Exactly, because the mechanism is intrinsic to the OS it is no longer perceivable as a separate mechanism but only as the OS itself. If you have programmed from the 1970's (as I have) this you could believe! "Monolingual" was indeed the software that I used as a matter of course; I doubt it can be undone!

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Xairbusdriver on July 14, 2010, 09:07:50 PM

QUOTE

I doubt it can be undone!

It could be done with just the OS Installer disk. Just use a "Custom" install and select the Languages section.

Lots of things that had to be done in the "70's" are rolled into the OS, literally thousands of mechanisms that earlier days required additional 'libraries' or new code. Bt removing stuff now has the same effect as back then. The stuff is missing, other stuff may not work or the machine won't even boot. I think even the developer of Monoliqual suggests that removing some language support may limit your use of the computer.

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Xairbusdriver on July 27, 2010, 05:29:26 PM

I naturally thought of this thread when I read the rather <long article linked here>. Despite it being long, even technical, at some points, I dare you to read it and not laugh out loud!

OK, but at least you'll have a big grin,

occasionally...

Tis is one of the funniest and easy to read explanations of why you get "?" instead of the character the writer wanted you to see in an email or a web page.

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: gunug on July 27, 2010, 08:20:41 PM

QUOTE

You probably think I'm going to talk about very old character sets like EBCDIC here. Well, I won't.
EBCDIC is not relevant to your life. We don't have to go that far back in time.

Oh, man I sure wish that I could remember the old and funny poem that involved EBCDIC! It wasn't
even off-color or anything it was just funny! Well, maybe it was only funny to people who used to program
IBM mainframe computers!

Title: My odd question: How do you set up the OS to be consistent?
Post by: Xairbusdriver on July 27, 2010, 08:28:34 PM

Just below that was where my first grin came:

QUOTE

Codes below 32 were called unprintable and were used for cussing.

What that means, of course, is that you can use ASCII codes below 32 here at TS!