GENERAL REQUEST

[Willem Grooters]

Just a request!

In general, if you CUT&PASE ito the forum, you'd better do this from plain ASCII. It will keep the entry clean and readble...

On occasion, I happen to read the forum from one of my VMS boxes, and I'm surely not the only one. Not all have a graphics interface, I _may_ have to rely on a text-only browser like LYNX. It's bad enough you need a web-browser to get to the data where DECNotes would often do...

Therefore this request:

Do NOT assume that everyone uses a system capable of presenting Office documents (in whatever format), or even graphics. Sometimes, the latter cannot be avoided, but the majority is text.

That implies:

* If you attach a file containing text, please use plain ascii. No HTML if that's not part of the example.
* If you attach an image, please convert it into a generic format like PDF or JPG.
* Large listings are better send as an attachment, eventually zipped (but that is a personal preference) - nevertheless: the files themselves should be in a generic format.

I found it time to mention this.

[Karl Rohwedder]

I can only agree with Willem and please don't attach DCL procedures as .COM...

regards Kalle

[Robert Gezelter]

Willem,

Certainly, for normal matters, ASCII text should be fine.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Jan van den Ende]

Willem,

another big AYE !!

I counld not agree more.

And though VMS nor LYNX would care, some other browsers DO demand that plain-text files be named .TXT

Please comply with that as well.

Another frequent "issue" stems from non-transportable diacritics & special symbols.

Please refrain from those as well.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Joseph Huber_1]

>> please don't attach DCL procedures as .COM...

The only point I don't agree: there is only one browser in the world, which has problems with .COM filenames, because it ignores the text/plain mime header: MSIE.
This browser should be avoided by all means! (not just for VMS forums).

[Jan van den Ende]

Joseph,

I am quite sure that I am not alone in that at work, I am (by company policy) restricted to just THAT one.

Not my choice, but one has to make concessions to the "main sponsor"...

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Edwin Gersbach_2]

I'm limited to the most stupid browser as well - at least here in the office. But what bothers me often is that the text is not displayed as intended by the writer. The following excerpt is from a new tread from yesterday:
---
If it is a TEST $ IF â  â  â  p1â  â  .eqs. â  TESTâ  then $ execute=â  DIR â  or a execute = â  TYPE â  and you check the existence of all the imbedded command files to execute
---
I hope it comes through as I see it: instead of quotes and double-quotes, I see a diacritical character followed by two squares. I guess this comes from pasting text out of a word document where word did some 'beautifying' to the quotes.

Very ugly indeed.

Edwin

[Jon Pinkley]

The combination of MS Word and the ITRC makes for some interesting displays. It doesn't help that when you paste it, things look ok. If you don't preview, you won't see the problem.

Having had post lost due to the ITRC forums going offline, I generally edit offline and paste into the ITRC. And I try to run this through a spelling checker before pasting.

Here's what seems to work for people using Windows.

Download a program like Metapad that will convert the slanted quotes to standard quotes. Metapad is a free notepad replacement that has other uses as well, for example it can convert text to and from cr-lf terminated lines (DOS) to lf only (Unix) format.

If you have used Word to compose or spell check, select all the text (Cntrl-A) copy to clipboard (Cntrl-C), open Metapad and paste the text there. The text will be "coerced" into ASCII, so things like quotes will be displayed correctly. Once in metapad, select it all again, copy to clipboard and paste into the ITRC.

If I remember to do these steps, the posts look as good as is possible with the fonts that the ITRC uses.

Here's a example entered in Word, and pasted directly here, followed by the same line first pasted to metapad, then recopied and pasted to the ITRC.

Copied directly from Word

$ write sys$output â This is from â â mswordâ â

The same line after pasting into metapad and recopying to clipboard before pasting into ITRC follows:

$ write sys$output "This is from ''msword'"

I don't understand why the ITRC software can't do this conversion itself. There seems to be no advantage to the way it gets displayed, because you can't cut and paste it back into Word to restore it to its original form.

[Anton van Ruitenbeek]

Jon,

..
I don't understand why the ITRC software can't do this conversion itself. There seems to be no advantage to the way it gets displayed, because you can't cut and paste it back into Word to restore it to its original form.
..

The same question we also ask is why do we have a downtime during upgrades ? If they were running OpenVMS for ITRC whe had a real stable environment. Know (unfortunaly) its running on HP-UX with all discomfort and interference with work.

AvR

[John Abbott_2]

Jon, thanks for the metapad heads up. I'll try this at home. Unfortunately like others I only have MSIE and limited access. If anything is attached as a .COM I can't even down load to view it (it gets blocked).

Cheers
John.