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Author Topic:   its hard to live in a microsoft world
DUCT TAPE
Super Geek

Posts: 103
From:
Registered: Sep 2001

posted April 11, 2002 12:54     Click Here to See the Profile for DUCT TAPE   Click Here to Email DUCT TAPE     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
i'm starting to get anoyed with my english teacher. she almost always has us bring our essays to class on disk so i just email it to myself, wich is faster then using an internet disk. well ya know what i use appeworks wich won't work on microsoft word, and i don't have a floppy drive. the past few days i've been fooling around in 9; aparently when i'm in 9 apple won't export to word so i have to save it as text. but still when i open them i have nice funny simbols in random places and missing quotes wich is a good way to get acused of plagorizing. it just bothers me how they all asume we all use pc's and microsoft. i needed to leet that out, i feel much better now.

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Geordie
Super Geek

Posts: 194
From: Fairfax Station, VA, USA
Registered: Nov 2001

posted April 11, 2002 14:44     Click Here to See the Profile for Geordie   Click Here to Email Geordie     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Have you tried rich text format? I have not used Clari^H^H^H^H^HAppleWorks in 9 in a long time but I seem to recall you could save as RTF.

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GameMaster
Super Geek

Posts: 208
From: State of insanity
Registered: Mar 2002

posted April 11, 2002 15:00     Click Here to See the Profile for GameMaster   Click Here to Email GameMaster     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
How about the some kind of markup language? Every system has programs that write HTML, and word opens HTML. This is the argument used by students when computers weren't so popular, "They assume we all have computers" and their answer was always "Well, there are labs." Ever consider turing in a copy either typed or written with quill? She says it has to be on a disk, did she say it had to be in a format she can read at home... If you have type the darn thing, let her find a Mac lab .

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azagthoth
Geek Larva

Posts: 21
From: Boca Raton, FL, USA
Registered: Mar 2002

posted April 11, 2002 16:57     Click Here to See the Profile for azagthoth     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Actually, ASCII is ASCII. if you it's really saving it as text[0](ACII) then the qoutes and other standard characters should show up correctly. You might want to switch to using a true text editor, not be a mac person I'm not sure what's availible but I'm pretty sure that there is a true text editor on there somewhere. If you using osX I would assume that it comes with vi or you could easily install it. The same should go for emacs or pico, which ever you prefer.

I had to deal with something similar at work when I had to write technical documentation for tech support. Mind you I am not a technical writer but as I knew the most about these subjects when I was in support the project got dumped on me. Of course they wanted all of this documentation in word format, but I refuse to touch word. At the time I was still in support as an advanced support tech and being forced to use windoze but I installed gvim for windoze and wrote all of my documentation with it. The supervisors were not thrilled with this but as they wanted it done and I would not use word they had to deal with it. IIRC one of the supervisors ended up reformatting it using word =).

You might want to try a similar apporved with your teacher, either write it a mac proprietary format or in good old plain ASCII and tell her you do not own a windoze box nor will you touch one =)

BTW let's remember that PC's do not just run windoze.

[0] Let's assume that by text we're refering to 7-bit ASCII. Yes I'm aware that UNIX, windoze, and mac all use different characters for their end of line, but hey this makes it more fun that way =)

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Apollyon-SM
Maximum Newbie

Posts: 16
From: Anchorage,Alaska,US
Registered: Oct 2001

posted April 11, 2002 17:24     Click Here to See the Profile for Apollyon-SM   Click Here to Email Apollyon-SM     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
This is just annoying: In Micrsoft Word, whenever you copy text and paste it into another program, it pastes it as a graphic.
sigh�

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"I can run faster than cheap panty hose on a itchy porcupine."

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DUCT TAPE
Super Geek

Posts: 103
From:
Registered: Sep 2001

posted April 11, 2002 18:03     Click Here to See the Profile for DUCT TAPE   Click Here to Email DUCT TAPE     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
normally i'm in X so i can just save it as ms word, but the point is i feel violated. using microsoft products goes against my morals :P

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macadddikt18
BlabberMouth, the Next Generation.

Posts: 1475
From: In a world beyond your understanding
Registered: Jan 2002

posted April 12, 2002 05:33     Click Here to See the Profile for macadddikt18   Click Here to Email macadddikt18     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I love word X. It is a great program. It is so much easier to use than its windows counter part. A few years ago you would not haev cought me using a microsoft product on my mac, but it is just easier adn the MacBU has done a great job making office X work with os X.
Nayt

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Charisma
Super Geek

Posts: 136
From: Somewhere (I'll just say Earth)
Registered: Mar 2002

posted April 21, 2002 11:58     Click Here to See the Profile for Charisma   Click Here to Email Charisma     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I think that M$ makes some good apps for Mac, Office and MSIE being the only two that I can think of. I think that this merits Bill Gates a seat on the 8th circle of hell instead of the ninth. Be thankful.

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"Hacking is not a
crime... no wait, it is."

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gryphon
Newbie

Posts: 9
From: The world is my office.
Registered: Apr 2002

posted April 22, 2002 07:31     Click Here to See the Profile for gryphon   Click Here to Email gryphon     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Microsoft does have a verry big monopoly on things. I use Star Office for Linux and Windows and usually this doesn't give any problems.

So mayby you can find some apps that run on Win and OSX, it goes against my principles aswell, but Office could be an option.
[ my god, did I say that ? ]

But I don't use OSX, sorry.

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Coward with Anonymity
unregistered
posted April 23, 2002 06:13           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

...dealing with this from the other end, I get requests from professors on a daily basis to decode unreadable documents submitted by students. I think the professors would rather be reading the papers then waiting for me to figure out which format it is in and which program or machine I have to open it on.

They would probably even rather be reading a .txt version. :-)

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spungo
Assimilated

Posts: 364
From: Hell's toilet
Registered: Jan 2002

posted April 23, 2002 06:20     Click Here to See the Profile for spungo     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Coward with Anonymity:

...dealing with this from the other end, I get requests from professors on a daily basis to decode unreadable documents submitted by students. I think the professors would rather be reading the papers then waiting for me to figure out which format it is in and which program or machine I have to open it on.

They would probably even rather be reading a .txt version. :-)


Quite. I have to handle documents for a publication - authors submit work in a bewildering variety of formats and expect you to be able to open it. And then I find M$'s interpretation of RTF is not compatible with Macs... we desperately need standards to be upheld in the IT world - otherwise geeks like me miss our coffee breaks through too much work. But yes, .txt is ideal - and for 99% of documents, that's all you need. (grumble...stupid html email...grumble...)

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- The Smiths

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OT
unregistered
posted April 23, 2002 21:56           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Here are a couple interesting examples of translation for you.

A student brought in a document (on a floppy disk) that she had done on an older version (v 3 or 4, I think) of Microsoft Works. We tried opening it using Word '97 and 2000 on the PCs here at the school - no dice. I took the floppy home and used my G3 Mac and AppleWorks with MacLink Translators to open the doc and save it in the standard .doc format Word uses on PCs. Worked fine. Needed an Apple program on and Apple OS to open an MS doc created with an MS app that couldn't be opened on an MS OS.

A second example: I created a Powerpoint .htm presentation to be viewed on the Internet. The web presentation was created without a hitch, but Internet Explorer 5.5 would not touch it. An error message claimed the document could not be opened in IE because it was protected. Netscape 4.7 opened and displayed the presentation without a hitch.

I could give you many more examples how I've used older Macs to open documents from bad floppies when Windows machines would encounter IO errors and not be able to access anything on the disks.

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nekomatic
Assimilated

Posts: 385
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: Mar 2000

posted April 24, 2002 08:36     Click Here to See the Profile for nekomatic   Click Here to Email nekomatic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
If you have the latest update to AppleWorks and OS X, can't you save your documents as PDF's? I don't use either so I can't tell you precisely how it works but IIRC you do a print preview then you somewhere have the option to save it to PDF, or something like that.

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Geordie
Super Geek

Posts: 194
From: Fairfax Station, VA, USA
Registered: Nov 2001

posted April 24, 2002 17:18     Click Here to See the Profile for Geordie   Click Here to Email Geordie     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by nekomatic:
If you have the latest update to AppleWorks and OS X, can't you save your documents as PDF's? I don't use either so I can't tell you precisely how it works but IIRC you do a print preview then you somewhere have the option to save it to PDF, or something like that.

That's the basic concept. Choose print and then click the preview button. It will create a PDF and open it in an application called Preview (or whatever your default PDF viewer is). Do a "save as" and you have a PDF of your document. The preview is screen resolution so it does not print at high-quality but for the aformentioned purpose it will be more than sufficient.

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iballoondesign
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Posts: 353
From: Midland, TX
Registered: Dec 2001

posted April 24, 2002 18:57     Click Here to See the Profile for iballoondesign   Click Here to Email iballoondesign     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I don't understand what is with MS Words. When I am use AppleWork 6... I save as .doc for Wins MS word format. That dummy won't appear more specficaly what I want. Because it show something strange with quote symbol and some tag in wrong text body.

I can't wait to get enough money to save and buy WordsX. So, it would be much easy for my family, school, and work to use send the doc format. Da-da-da-da

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nekomatic
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Posts: 385
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: Mar 2000

posted April 25, 2002 02:43     Click Here to See the Profile for nekomatic   Click Here to Email nekomatic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Geordie:
The preview is screen resolution so it does not print at high-quality but for the aformentioned purpose it will be more than sufficient.


Aah. Presumably if it's screen resolution then each page is just one big graphic and you can't select and copy text, etc? That's a big difference from a 'real' PDF IMHO.

Now I don't feel so bad about not having Appleworks and OS X.

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Geordie
Super Geek

Posts: 194
From: Fairfax Station, VA, USA
Registered: Nov 2001

posted April 25, 2002 19:14     Click Here to See the Profile for Geordie   Click Here to Email Geordie     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by nekomatic:
Aah. Presumably if it's screen resolution then each page is just one big graphic and you can't select and copy text, etc? That's a big difference from a 'real' PDF IMHO.

Now I don't feel so bad about not having Appleworks and OS X.


What I meant is that any graphics would be at 72DPI. The text is copyable text . Also more to the point I may be wrong, I was basing this on something that the Apple printing guys told me prior to Mac OS X release. I just tested resizing a graphic to be 288 dpi in Word (Appleworks was not in my Dock) and then did a print preview. It looked normal at 400% magnification. I have the full version of Acrobat set as my PDF viewer app though.

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Stormtalon
Geek-in-Training

Posts: 31
From: Minnesota
Registered: Feb 2002

posted April 26, 2002 06:29     Click Here to See the Profile for Stormtalon     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Even easier in OS X than the Print Preview route (and far better quality), is simply select Print and then PDF as your 'printer.' I've had great success doing that.

Stormtalon

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DUCT TAPE
Super Geek

Posts: 103
From:
Registered: Sep 2001

posted April 28, 2002 19:41     Click Here to See the Profile for DUCT TAPE   Click Here to Email DUCT TAPE     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
microsoft front page can read a mac saved rtf. i discovered that in a state of panic at the beginning of an english class one day. just thought i'd throw that in the mix

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crazyarlo
Maximum Newbie

Posts: 17
From: Belpre, Ohio, USA
Registered: Mar 2002

posted May 02, 2002 04:50     Click Here to See the Profile for crazyarlo   Click Here to Email crazyarlo     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Doesn't Appleworks let you save in Word format? I am using Applworks 5, and it has options for WinWord, Word 3, 4 and 5.

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Atmosphere
Geek Larva

Posts: 22
From: St. Louis, MO
Registered: Mar 2001

posted May 02, 2002 06:37     Click Here to See the Profile for Atmosphere     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The latest version of AppleWorks X is able to save files in a handful of MS Word formats. However, when dealing with cross platform work environments I have had a lot of success using the RTF format, at least when I have had to send documents to Windows users.

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Atmosphere
Geek Larva

Posts: 22
From: St. Louis, MO
Registered: Mar 2001

posted May 02, 2002 06:46     Click Here to See the Profile for Atmosphere     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Stormtalon:
Even easier in OS X than the Print Preview route (and far better quality), is simply select Print and then PDF as your 'printer.' I've had great success doing that.

Stormtalon



hmmm... I thought that should be possible, after all, didn't Jobs make a big deal about the built in PDF capabilities of X back in the beta days? However, PDF isn't showing up as one of my printer choices. Any suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong?

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