CSX+ fonts & cross-platform email exchange

[Jaap Pranger]

Robert Zydenbos <zydenbos at BIGFOOT.DE> wrote:

>Perhaps you could try UUencoding? See whether the mailer software
>which you use offers that option.

Eudora Light (Mac) has the AppleDouble option, it does the same
trick, UUencoding is available. I will try.

>The surest way would probably be to send data in an archive. There
>are compatible Mac and PC archivers for ZIP and LZH formats (and
>perhaps other formats too), and besides reducing the size of the data
>package that is sent, the archive works as a protective envelope
>around the data. I used to do this regularly years back when sending
>texts between a Mac in Canada (using MacLha, a Japanese program
>available free of cost) and a PC in the Netherlands (using Lha.exe,
>idem ditto) by modem. It should work via the internet too. Because
>archives are not recognised by mailer software as documents, they are
>sent as binary files, and therefore mysterious transformations like
>those which you have experienced will not occur.

Actually I was thinking in this direction already, but I'm not too
familiar with all the encoding and compression formats. Thanks a lot!
I will try and let you know, but unfortunately that won't be
before late next week as I'm short of fursat right now.

Another probable solution I had in mind is to write a "transliteration
table" for use in Eudora that reverses the re-encoding of text.
But that doesn't seem like a very elegant solution to me. A general
text converter might be better.

>An alternative could be to send texts in RTF format, because RTF
>files are basically plain ASCII files. But this will not be so secure
>as sending archives.

No, this didn't work, RTF's are recognised as text files by Eudora
and are converted.




Ferenc Ruzsa <f_ruzsa at ISIS.ELTE.HU> wrote:

>Of course no sane person would use Windows - if he has the choice.
>It seems many of us do not have.

Hmmm, I tend to agree with you in the spirit, but how dare you say
such a thing in plain public in a war prone environment?  ;-)





Lars Martin Fosse <lmfosse at ONLINE.NO> wrote:

>I have heard nice things about Linux. Have any of you had any
>experience with the use of Linux as an operating system?

No experience, but as an OS it should be OK. The lack of an easy user
interface is an other story. However, within a year from now we may
expect to see Apple's flavour of Unix (Mac OS X Consumer), including
the trusted graphical user interface.





John Smith <jds10 at CAM.AC.UK> wrote:

>Typically, text handling on a Unix machine is done in plain text files,
>using a typesetter such as TeX for printed copy. CSX can be made to work
>in this configuration (I use it as a matter of course); CSX+ would just
>take a bit of extra effort. But more PC-like word processors and other
>similar "application" software have now started to appear, so that route
>is also available; the existing CSX+ fonts should work fine with these
>packages.

Can you easily exchange Tex documents with Windows and MacOS
users?  I guess you can, but please tell.

Sure, TeX is quite powerful and nice as a typesetting program. But as
far as I can see it takes a -lot of extra- effort, and also it is not very
transparent when it comes to editing text. Also the overhead of all the
software components, font utilities, and knowledge you need. This
may be acceptable for compositors, but in word processing this extra
effort should (and soon can) be kept under the hood.

I hope and pray the suffering will come to an end within one or two years
when native Unicode operating systems with real Unicode based word
processors and database applications should be in place.

BTW, John, last year in Conv-Dev you mentioned ACII.  You said: "ACII
is the name used for the full 8-bit character set comprising 7-bit ASCII
in the lower half and 7-bit ISCII in the upper half."
Is this charset in use anywhere? I can't imagine reasonable Nagari
coming out from a 7-bit subset.

Thanks all,

Jaap Pranger

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