Thanks Richmond, good observe as the Scots say (do you say it? RLS did.) In my case saving to .doc or any other format isn't on, because I can't predict what my users will do: if someone thinks a dash is a minus sign, then they will copy it regardless - I can't give them elaborate instructions to do an export - they would be ignored, and anyway they wouldn't be in the spirit of "just do it" which this app promotes. I just have to make sure the pasted text that comes into my LC app is more cleverly treated (see my reply to Paul DeRocco, just now). Since it's cross-platform, I also have to accommodate both PC and Mac ways of doing things.
It is quite likely that I did muck up the original input, but more testing and sweat will sort it out, now I know what the issue is. Thanks again Graham On 30 Jan 2014, at 08:52, Richmond <richmondmathew...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 29/01/14 23:40, Graham Samuel wrote: >> I'm using LC 6.5.1 on a Mac with Mavericks. Recently I was given a Pages >> document with some text I needed to paste into a LiveCode desktop app. > > You can, save from Pages into Microsoft's ubiquitous .doc format. > > My younger son, who stays in Germany and uses a MacBook, sent me a pages > document in that format, I then opened it > on Linux with Libre Office, and everything came through clearly. So: > > 1. Pages works with the MacRoman standard and converts this to Unicode when > it saves to .doc. Yep, but not when it saves to the clipboard (Copy or Cut). > > or > > 2. Libre Office on Linux opens any .doc document perfectly regardless of its > character encoding. > > or > > 3. Pages DOES encode in Unicode. > > I wonder ???? > >> The relevant text was: >> >> 3*(-1*x^2 + 4)(-1*x^4 - 5x + 2) >> >> (Don't worry, it's just a meaningless example). >> >> I changed this to plain text (it had originally been coloured and I thought >> this might affect the result). I then used an LC script to search for some >> characters, particularly the minus signs. Couldn't find them. Then I >> realised that I had to put the text string through LC's MactoISO function > > Does Pages use MacRoman, or had you, by putting the text through LC's > MactoISO function mucked it about? > >> - so Pages, far from using UniCode (I thought everybody was doing it) is >> still using the old Mac character set. LC, even on a Mac, apparently isn't. >> The thing is, the pasted text **looks** OK in an LC field, but it's not. >> >> Just a gotcha that surprised me and may bite someone else. >> >> I'm wondering if LC 7 will take this kind of problem away. I'm also >> wondering what Apple are up to still using a proprietary character code. And >> I'm wondering if I should have tried to do the whole thing with Unicode text. > > Unfortunately I'm at work where everything runs on Linux. However, when I get > home this evening I shall dig out my macMini > (which has a licensed version of Pages running on it) and see what is going > on. > > This: > > http://www.apple.com/mac/pages/compatibility/#text > > is remarkably unhelpful as it is written for people who are interested in > typing documents rather than transferring the end results > into happy little places such as an LC field. There is NO mention of |the U > word" (Unicode). > > Richmond. >> >> Graham >> _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
