Re: Ms. problem

----- Original Message -----
From: Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>

> 1. The original was composed in WordPerfect8; some portions
> transfer to Word
> 2000 with only minor problems; but the main portion, an 80+ page
> wordlist/dictionary in 2-column format with lots of "special
> characters",comes out quite screwy.
As would be expected. WP had its own mechanism for foreign characters. I would
have hoped Word would be moderately capable of reading them correctly, though.

> I will try first, eliminating
> the column format--
> that worked for the file version of the Kash dict. (I could re-
> install WP,
> but IIRC WP files are often unreadable on many computers.)
>
> The idea of retyping the major part isn't appealing, but probably
> necessary,
You could try http://www.simtel.net/ for a word-processor format converter or something.

> 2. If I were to put this on-line, I suspect a .pdf format would be
> best; my
> computer can't create one, so I assume I'll have to buy something
> from adobe
> :-(((
There is a PDF printer driver for Windows that is free. Basically, it looks to your
Windows applications as if it's a printer, but it actually outputs a PDF file
to your hard disk instead. Damned if I can remember the name of it, but it does
exist.

> Also, I seem to recall from past discussion that publishing
> things on
> the web precludes later print-publication. Is that correct,
Somewhat. Publishing photos on the web requires a much lower resolution than printing
photos out, and that can screw people up.

> and does it apply to pdf's?
It can, but it needn't. If you "print" the PDF at (say) 600dpi, it will be
suitable for both soft and hard copy.

> 3. There is also the question of which font to use. The only special
> character not available in Times New Roman is glottal stop; I can
> insert one
> from Thryomanes or (ugh) Lucida Sans Unicode, but would that show up
> properly in a pdf if the user didn't have that font?
Certainly with Adobe Acrobat, you can set it up to include special characters as
graphics (i.e. you can say "include text in fonts X, Y, and Z just by
specifying the font name, but include text in fonts I, J and K by outputting
the graphics for them"). I suspect that the PDF printer mentioned above could
do it, too. As a last resort, you can check the "print text as graphics" option
on the Printer Setup dialog. You'll make a bigger PDF, but PDF includes some
fairly good compression to cope with that.




Paul

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