On 30 Jan 01, at 10:42, Bruce Kingsbury wrote:
> I'd agree with that, but he referred to using windows devices from
> Linux.. EG printing to a WinPrinter from your Gnome desktop.. I've had to
> do this in the past, and it's really painful.
groan!
That's what I'm proposing to do (not being able to afford a
replacement for my Star Dozetype 4000)
I think I'll try hanging an a4 refill and a biro of the back of my Linux
box parallel port - it might be easier.
I can't wait for the day when I can consign Windows to the rubbish
bin entirely but before then I need to get a Linux-compliant laser-
printer (inkjets don't measure up, never will) and convert all my M$
Oriface documents into something that Linux apps can read
(#$##$% Microsoft Word's "smart quotes" and other "helpful"
characters don't seem to come across into Star Office documents.)
For the sake of the blissfully ignorant (and I hope there are some of
you out there) "smart" quotes is M$'s option that automatically
turns ' and " into "sixes" and "nines" or "sixty-sixes" and "ninety-
nines" - depending on whether the apostrophe or double-quote
appears to the right or left of a space. Dunno what character set
they use, but it doesn't convert back across to ASCII char-set
*even* when you tell Word to SaveAs "Text" (which loses all font
formatting). Word-produced RTF files can't even be reliably
imported into editors that use ASCII. Other "smart" punctuation
includes en- and em-spaces, en- and em-dashes and other
typographical marks. OK, It can be turned off, but any docs
created while it was turned on need to have every single smart
punctuation mark replaced before converting to Star Office files.
(The only way I've discovered how to do this so far is to use global
replace to first of all replace every " or ' or em-space with a
character not used anywhere in the document (I used the tilde)
then go back and replace all instances of that character with the
correct one - assuming "smart
punctuation" is turned off ther characters will be standard ASCII.
You can't replace " with " in Word)
So, regrettably, until I've edited every single document I have on my
Windows box and scraped up enough for a real laser printer, I'm
going to need to learn how to send my print output down the wire to
a doze box to print.
Regards
Jon Tocker
***There is no spoon***
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