WP advice, please
in [Mac Applications]
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From: erilar on 6 Jun 2010 14:34 In article <yobtypg3xo4.fsf(a)panix3.panix.com>, BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net wrote: > I've got some old AW docs, I suppose they're older than v6 > because Pages claimed it was unable to open them ("This document > was created with an unsupported version of Appleworks"). Now that's scary. I'm forever digging up old--and I mean old ClarisWorks--documents I want to open, and AW 6 still does it. > > Any idea how I'd open them for conversion? It's not a lot - only > a couple of old docs and not a tragedy if I lose them. But it'd > be nice to have them anyway. > > That said, to the OP - I highly recommend Pages. It's far from > perfect, but it's very nice. The page layout features are nice > and the plain old word processing is very easy. All I do with AW is word processing with an occasional graphic pasted in. > > If you want "useless cruft" you must have been talking about Word... I have been blessed to be able to avoid M$ most of my years. I once had to deal with their e-mail for Mac to open mail around school. I don't use the appropriate adjectives publicly. And when I'm overseas on a strange computer trying to send e-mail home, it's only been a Mac once out of several trips. > > Once you've converted your docs, though, if you want a more basic > word processor than Pages, I encourage you to try out Bean. It's been mentioned and I intend to look at it, thanks. Basic can be pretty useful at times. The only thing I use for putting together my web page is BBEdit Lite and it's pretty old. Does the job. -- Erilar, biblioholic medievalist http://www.mosaictelecom.com/~erilarlo
From: William Yeo on 6 Jun 2010 14:45 Hail In article <drache-6DF960.09532006062010(a)reserved-multicast-range-not-delegated.exa mple.com>, erilar <drache(a)chibardun.net.invalid> wrote: > I know my WP(AppleWorks 6) is archaic, but I've been using first > ClarisWorks, then AppleWorks for over a decade and not only are all my > documents in AW, but I don't really have to think about using it, just [snipt] > > OpenOffice and TextEdit both destroy my documents because they reject > the fonts, apparently. I get garbage with both. Have you tries NeoOffice (a Mac offshoot of OpenOffice) ? I converted all mu AW stuff to it long ago. I think I used AW to convert the documents to Word or Excel and then opened them in NeoOffice to check them and the re-save in odt/ods. I think there's also a free version of Lotus Symphony for the Mac available somewhere (don't have the URL any more). It can read Word/Excel file also IIRC. Good luck.
From: BreadWithSpam on 6 Jun 2010 16:19 erilar <drache(a)chibardun.net.invalid> writes: > In article <yobtypg3xo4.fsf(a)panix3.panix.com>, > BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net wrote: > > > I've got some old AW docs, I suppose they're older than v6 > > because Pages claimed it was unable to open them ("This document > > was created with an unsupported version of Appleworks"). > > Now that's scary. I'm forever digging up old--and I mean old > ClarisWorks--documents I want to open, and AW 6 still does it. I suspect that my only option for getting those old files open is to open them in AW6 and then resave, either as RTF or as AW6 docs, which can then be opened in Pages. I really hate that formats go so stale. It's one of the things I loved about the ancient word processors where we'd have plain text documents with markup codes embedded - no matter what happened, you'd be able to extract the contents (sans formatting) pretty trivially. -- Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
From: Geoffrey S. Mendelson on 6 Jun 2010 16:59 BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net wrote: > I really hate that formats go so stale. It's one of the things > I loved about the ancient word processors where we'd have plain > text documents with markup codes embedded - no matter what happened, > you'd be able to extract the contents (sans formatting) pretty > trivially. Thanks to the people who run the Yahoo Mac Word Perfect group and Corel releasing Word Perfect for the Mac to the public, You can download a Mac emulator with a pre-built operating system disk and Word Perfect 1, 2 (on one version) and 3.5e (on the other). Apple does not seem to mind as they don't support them, but the versions as you download them only run on a real Mac. I also kept a copy of Nisus from just after they dropped dongles (needed for Hebrew support), although I have 2 of them somewhere, and Microsoft Word 5. On the PC side, I have kept my copies of WordPerfect 4.2,5.1 and 5.2 for Dos, and Wordstar 3.3 (which will also open CP/M Wordstar files). If I really got stuck, I could hack together a 486 system, install DOS 6 and Windows 3.3 and M/S Office 4.2. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm(a)mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.
From: Richard Maine on 6 Jun 2010 17:02
<BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net> wrote: > I really hate that formats go so stale. It's one of the things > I loved about the ancient word processors where we'd have plain > text documents with markup codes embedded - no matter what happened, > you'd be able to extract the contents (sans formatting) pretty > trivially. Some of us still use such schemes. I use plain text almost all the time. The documents I wrote 40 years ago are still perfectly readable and I expect them to be so for long after I am dead. (Whether they are worth reading is a separate question). On the rare occasion when I really want formatting (mostly when writing a formal, published document), I usually use LaTeX, which is plain text with markup codes. On the even more rare occasion when I am coerced into using some allegedly WYSIWYG word processor, I invariably regret it. The vendor and version lock-in that tends to come with them is only one reason. -- Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain |