A text editor with font support?
Klaas Wolterstorff
I know that's a contradiction in terms, since font support typically means
you've got a word processor rather than a text editor, but let me explain.
I'd like to find an editor that saves straight ANSI files with embedded
inline codes governing formatting. My formatting needs are simple: I need to
be able to display the full ANSI character set; I'd like to be able to
display different character styles like bold and italic; and I need to be
able to display all installed Windows fonts, especially my Greek and Hebrew
fonts. In short, I'd like this editor to behave much like Ventura, but
something I don't need is support for paragraph styles. Does such a beast
exist?
My situation is this. When my company brought typesetting inhouse many moons
ago, using VP 1, we let the needs of the production department govern how
things would be done in the editorial department (something I've been
thankful for ever since). At that time, our editors worked in Wordstar 3.x.
Rather than using any of Wordstar's formatting features, we devised a coding
scheme for specifying nonkeyboard characters, nonstandard character sets,
and character and paragraph styles that would make it simplest for the
production people to bring edited texts into Ventura. For example, we use
the codes \ii and \rr to signify italic on and off and \gr and \go to
signify greek on and off. Because Wordstar files were the next thing to
ASCII, it was simple to convert the edited files to Ventura's coding scheme.
With the passage of time, we in production moved from VP 1 to VP 8, and our
editors moved from Wordstar 3.x to Word 2000 -- but they use Word
essentially as an ASCII editor, and they deliver ASCII text files to
production using virtually the same coding scheme we devised years ago.
Fine for me, but now the natives are getting restless. They're wondering
why, since both Word and Ventura are Windows applications, they can't use
the same Greek and Hebrew fonts that we use. And I really can't blame them.
But the solution is not so simple. We already invest a great deal of time
and money getting author files converted from myriad word processors into a
normalized format (coded ASCII), and the advantages of importing precoded
ASCII files into Ventura are great enough that I'm not willing simply to let
the editors use Word's native formatting and font support. That would be a
big step backward in our workflow.
So what I'm looking for is an editor that gives both editorial and
production people what they need. The editorial department needs full
Windows font and character style support (support for paragraph styles is
not required). The production department needs ASCII or ANSI format files
with embedded inline codes that can easily be converted to Ventura's ASCII
or ANSI import format. We in production generally do a lot of work on edited
files before importing them into Ventura, so not being able to reduce them
to ASCII or ANSI before import is not an option.
Does anyone have any ideas on what's available? I've done some poking around
and haven't found any viable candidates. Text editors don't support fonts,
and word processors save in some binary format or, at the least, in RTF. For
my purposes, RTF is not a whole lot better than native Word format; it's got
a huge amount of overhead that would need to be stripped out before I could
work on the files, and that's not a trivial task unless there's some
customizable RTF stripper available that I'm not aware of (and again,
because of how I work I would need to strip RTF coding before importing the
files, not in the process of importing). I've begun wondering whether some
visual HTML editor might do the trick, but HTML has its own overhead, and
developing a no-brainer process to strip out what's unnecessary, leaving
what is necessary, isn't trivial. SGML and XML are mere buzzwords to me at
this point, but my impression is that's not the way to go, either.
Anyone have any thoughts? Has anyone gone down this road before?
Thanks,
Klaas
Jim Hart
To my knowledge, what you want does not exist. That said, you can
probably do what you want with Word and a set of Word Macros to convert
Word markup to Ventura markup so that the text can be saved as marked
up ANSI.
Yes, others have been there before. The macros you need are here:
http://www.guyverville.com/assets/Scripts/VMacros.zip
and you can find a description of them here:
http://www.guyverville.com/html/scripts.php
While the page appears to be about InDesign, it is really about both ID
and VP. Just scroll down a ways to the Text Cleaning section.
There is a link to the macros in the Text Cleaning section but it is
bad. Use the one above.
Jim Hart
www.microtecniqs.com
Ventura FAQ available at:
http://www.draw.nu/venturafaq/
Werner Perplies
Hi Klass,
"Klaas Wolterstorff" <kwo...@eerdmans.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:40ad0ba0$1_3@cnews...
>
> Anyone have any thoughts? Has anyone gone down this road before?
Yes Sir! -;)
You need a simple rtf-editor which saves content to ansi file with included
command strings.
I don't know a ready prongram for such thing, oh I forgot Open Office or new
versions of word (I never test word for this), A special simple program,
that does these things should be easy to program, but if you need a lot of
word processing functions a word processor program with automatic conversion
after saving is the best way to do this.!
--
have a good day
Werner
__
Werner Perplies
www.weepee.biz/en/scripts.html (Last updated: May 18, 2004)
New Ventura Script: CreateAndAnchorFrames just updated with
with automatic setup
>
> Thanks,
>
> Klaas
>
>
>
>
>
Taddeus
Hello, all,
Please note of the following changes.
The scripts are available at http://www.guyverville.com/scripts.php. A redirection page has been set to
accomodate old bookmarks.
Thanks Jim for pinpointing the bad link. It's been repaired.
--
Guy Verville
www.guyverville.com
Just published: Les Années-rebours (http:www.varia.com/livre.asp?id=74)
Eric Weber
In article <Xns94F07158...@216.191.232.194>, Taddeus
<tad...@spamcop.net> says...
> http://www.guyverville.com/scripts.php
Just updated the source file for the FAQ.
-- Eric
[C_TECH Volunteer]
http://www.fhcomm.com
Check out the Ventura FAQ at:
http://www.draw.nu/venturafaq/
or download a PDF copy at:
http://www.fhcomm.com/VenturaFAQ.pdf
T. A. Straayer
Actually, you may already have your solution in hand: Microsoft Word. If
both of your departments are willing to compromise a bit, anyway.
Word has a save-as-ANSI option: "Text with layout (*.ans)." If you gave your
editors Word files that contained both the font formatting they're looking
for and your legacy ASCII codes, they could have their Greek and Hebrew cake
and you could eat it, too, so long as someone saved their edited work as
ANSI files.
Instead of giving them ASCII files, give them Word files with any Greek
formatted using your Greek font but also surrounded with your \gr and \go
codes. Presumably your editors are already familiar with these codes, so
they shouldn't be too much of a distraction. They could edit the Greek to
their hearts' content. When the editing is complete, your editors (or
someone in your production department) could save the Word file as ANSI,
convert the surviving \gr and \go codes to Ventura markup code --
<F"YourGreekFont"> and <F255> -- and you should be able to import the ANSI
file into Ventura without loss of information.
This wouldn't work with Unicode or OpenType Greek or Hebrew, but it should
work with any nonroman font that maps to the ANSI character set.
Manuel Castelao
> It sounds like you may be looking for XyWrite, a very powerful word
> processor developed (as I understand it) by some ex-Atex people (Atex
> was a typesetting system). XyWrite saved its files in plain ASCII text
> with the formatting commands embedded in the text, not unlike what
> Ventura does. Ventura included a filter for XyWrite. While most versons
> of XyWrite were for DOS, a Windows version was released in the early 90s
> before the company folded. A Google search on xywrite resulted in many
> hits.
>
There is an ansified version of XyWrite due to Robert Holmgren (taking
benefit from the XyWrite customization capabilities). I use it and so I
can manage Ventura 10 in the old Ventura style: all texts external in
ANSI format. Every time I load the publication in Ventura, it reflects
last changes.
See: http://www.serve.com/xywwweb/
Manuel Castelao