There are two unrelated issues here. 1 How characters are encoded in the file - ANSI, DBCS and so on. 2 How newlines are encoded.
Newlines first. There is no consistent "newline" character (indicating the end of a line) as there is for the character "a". Instead, Windows and MS-DOS uses two characters - carriage return CR, 10, and line feed LF, 13. But Unix (and Apple Mac) uses one character - line feed LF, 13. So a text file can be in Windows/MS-DOS encoding or Unix encoding. If you open a Unix text file in Notepad you'll find that the newlines are missing and the whole thing is one big lump of text. WordPad is smarter and realises the single LF characters should be newlines, so you don't see this happen. So if you have a Unix text file - no newlines in Notepad - then you can open it in WordPad and then save it as Text or MS-DOS Text and it'll then work correctly in Notepad and DOS. At this point I'm going to admit that I can't tell why there are two WordPad Save As Text options. They both produce Windows/MS-DOS format ANSI text files. Now, character encodings. This is even more complicated. Essentially, old-style ANSI can give you those files with lots of question marks and the wrong characters. Use Unicode, which means using the UTF-8 or the Unicode setting in Notepad or WordPad. Both are Unicode, but different ways of encoding it - when Windows says "Unicode" is often means "DBCS". But anyway, Notepad can do either type, as can WordPad. Here are two files with Greek in them, one in the "Unicode" format, one in UTF8. Both work in Notepad: http://development.webbie.org.uk/test/text/Text-Unicode.txt http://development.webbie.org.uk/test/text/Text-UTF8.txt Here's a detailed explanation, though some of the text is displayed using images: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html So I think you should be able to use WordPad to open any file then save it as Unicode, and all should then be well for Windows machines. For MS-DOS pre-Windows machines you'll need to save as ANSI, which means setting the code page of your machine to the language you want to support - Greek, for example - and accepting that files with Unicode and non-Greek character will be mangled on your system. Best wishes, Alasdair King WebbIE On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 12:42 AM, Eleni Vamvakari <[email protected]> wrote: > So today, I decided to see how Word Perfect 5.1 and Ed.exe would > read files saved as .txt in Notepad and .txt (MS-DOS format) in > Wordpad. The only difference that I noticed is that the lines started > and stopped at different points so that a sentence that began on one > line in one format might have already begun on the line above that in > the other. In both cases, VocalEyes didn't read the sentences > properly in Ed.exe. The words at the end of each line would cut off. > But in Word Perfect 5.1, it read the lines perfectly. I'm baffled by > this, since Ed is from Word Perfect Corporation and even uses the same > commands as 5.1. The only difference is that it saves as .txt and not > as .wpd and it doesn't convert the .txt files to .wpd when you open > them. I then checked the settings in VocalEyes in both programs and > they were the same. > > I'm completely confused here. Why is it doing this? I would gladly > use NoteWorthy, as I love that program, but the file was too large for > it to handle. I'd like to try Microsoft Word 5.5, but for some > reason, it's only downloadable as an .exe file and it's over 1.44mb. > The DOS machine that I'm using right now only has a floppy drive (the > pcmcia slot is taken up by the KeyNote Voicecard synth, which I won't > remove unless absolutely necessary) so I have no way of getting the > program on there. It also doesn't have the regular editor that's > supposed to come with MS-DOS 6.21 and I can't seem to find that > anywhere! I on't even know if it's accessible. Can anyone help me or > recommend another editor for me to try? Should I use JAWS or ASAP to > see if I get different results or are the settings in the program > rather than in the screen reader? > > Thanks, > Eleni > > On 7/14/10, Eleni Vamvakari <[email protected]> wrote: >> Last night, I went to >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_file#Formats >> >> and still don't completely understand this. >> >> "Most Windows text files use a form of ANSI, OEM or Unicode encoding. >> What Windows terminology calls "ANSI encodings" are usually >> single-byte ISO-8859 encodings, except for in locales such as Chinese, >> Japanese and Korean that require double-byte character sets. ANSI >> encodings were traditionally used as default system locales within >> Windows, before the transition to Unicode. By contrast, OEM encodings, >> also known as MS-DOS code pages, were defined by IBM for use in the >> original IBM PC text mode display system. They typically include >> graphical and line-drawing characters common in full-screen MS-DOS >> applications. Newer Windows text files may use a Unicode encoding such >> as UTF-16LE or UTF-8." >> >> So, what's the difference between a Windows and a DOS .txt file. >> Does it matter, when reading with a DOS text editor or wordprocessor, >> whether I saved the file with Notepad as .txt or saved it with Wordpad >> as .txt (MS-DOS format)? If not, then why does Wordpad have a MS-DOS >> format option? I'm pretty sure that Notepad doesn't use unicode >> because I can't save Greek files with it and always have to use >> Wordpad and save them as rtf. I know that files saved as either type >> of .txt will read under Word Perfect and NoteWorthy but WP (including >> the text editor) acts strangely with VocalEyes at times, not reading >> complete lines and sometimes skipping lines, and I'm trying to find >> out why it does this. I've installed the set files for Word Perfect >> Office, hoping that it would solve this problem, but it hasn't done >> so. Interestingly enough, it doesn't do this with all files. I >> thought that perhaps it was word wrap, but apparently, it's >> automatically set to on, so that might not be the case. I need this >> sorted so that I can decide how to save my documents that I'll be >> transferring over to the DOS machine, or if it's not the formatting, >> then I need to learn what changes have to be made either in VocalEyes >> or in Word perfect so that it reads properly.. I'm currently using a >> KeyNote Gold laptop, which doesn't have the built-in MS-DOS editor, so >> I can't test my files there and NoteWorthy can't handle large files. >> I need to save the tutorials that I found for QuickBASIC and for batch >> programming, so the sooner this can be resolved the better. >> >> Thanks, >> Eleni >> > > For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: > http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ > -- Alasdair King For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
