Mac Mania 5/MacMania 5.toast//Tools&Utilities/Step Across 1.20/Step Across Manual E

Text File | 1995-03-01 | 13KB | 352 lines

(This text looks good in Monaco or Courier 9pt, esp. for the list closing it.)



Some early words:

- "Step Across" is freeware.
- You are using this software at your own risk.
- It was written and it’s copyrighted by
  Michael Ahrweiler in Hamburg, Germany.

  If you do run into things, that do not behave as they should,
  you can reach me on the Internet: [e-mail]

That’s all for the early times.
Make yourself at home, here comes the doc.
Michael Ahrweiler





THE STEP ACROSS MANUAL FILES
----------------------------

Step Across converts ASCII-text between the systems:
DOS, OS2, Windows, Unix, Atari, Amiga and Macintosh (& vice versa).



QUICK OUTLINE
-------------

Using Step Across after starting it with the a doubleclick:

- Starting Step Across by doubleclick allows you to select and to convert
  one text after the other while dragdrop will do as much as you can drag
  in one hit.

- You should first go to the OPTIONS-menu to select the "opponent" operating
  system, to/from which you want to convert.
  You will find the appropriate popup menu the configuration dialog selecting
  the menu entry "options->CONFIGURATION".

- There are some more things you can set in this dialog, like selecting TYPE
  and CREATOR of the target file. Maybe you want to give the converted file a
  brandnew name or maybe you rely on the automatism, which adds an extension.
  You decide here which character will replace those which are not
  convertible, or if some unwrapping and typographic conversion should be done
  on the text etc etc.
  Just take a look at the configuration-dialog and set, what you prefer.
  All of those details will follow below.

- The name of the opponent system will appear in brackets in the menu-bar.
  Additionally the "To Other" entry in the file-menu will be renamed to
  the selected system (like: "To Windows").

- The conversion is started by selecting the desired direction from the FILE-menu.
  The open dialog will come up to select a file to be converted.

- While converting Step Across will display a status box with a progress bar.
  You can cancel the conversion by pressing "command-period" or by clicking
  the "Cancel"-Button.

- If you have selected so, the save dialog will ask you for a name for
  the converted text-file.

- Whenever you leave the program all actual settings will be saved.
  (There will be a message on the first launch, when no pref-file is found,
   and the default values will be set).


The very same thing in DRAGDROP-mode:

- After having once set your basic configuration, you might find it much more
  comfortable to launch Step Across by dragging the item(s) you want to convert
  on its icon.

- You may drag as many selected items on the Step Across icon, as you want to.
  Yet, Step Across will not open or look inside of folders.
  The converted files will be put into the same folder, as the originals,
  and will be written over the original files, if you don’t change their names
  (by hand or by letting Step Across add an extension).

- In dragdrop-mode the default direction for the conversion is: to Mac!
  You can switch it to "To Other", by holding the OPTION key down, while you
  drag the item(s) to the Step Across icon.

- If you are in doubt about your actual configuration, you can force the
  config-dialog to come up before conversion by holding down the COMMAND key.
  (You can hold down both "option" and "command" to convert "To Other" after
   checking/changing your configuration.)

- In case, you dragged more than one item on the Step Across icon,
  hitting "command/period" will ask if you want to cancel the conversion of the
  actual file (as named above the status bar) or the entire process.

- If Step Across was already running when you dragged items, it will not terminate
  after the conversion, (as a dragdrop-utility should) but waits for more files.




CONFIGURATION 1 (File Management)
---------------------------------

What choices do I have for the target files:

- TYPE and CREATOR can be set (or will be left unchanged).

- You can be add an extension after your choice to the original file name,
  to save the result in a different file. The extension can be different,
  depending the direction of the conversion.

- Also you the target file can be renamed manually, if you do want to give
  it a new, more descriptiv (longer) file name.

  If you have selected both options, then the save dialog will come up after
  each conversion defaulted with the original file name plus the extension.

  If you have selected neither of both options, the original files will be
  overwritten WITHOUT NOTICE!!!

  This "low garbage-high danger" mode will not work, if the file in question is
  larger than the available memory. Step Across will then ask for different file
  name (and will not let you go on until you enter some).

  BTW: If you have selected at least one of the renaming options, you will be
       noted, if an existing file is to be overwritten.




CONFIGURATION 2 (Conversion)
----------------------------

Memory handling:
  There is no limit in size for the files you convert with Step Across.
  If you want to deal a mega ton-file, the program will do it in slices
  fitting into the available memory. You can upsize the slices by giving
  Step Across more than the original 384k in the INFO-dialog in the finder.
  It might speed the conversion of large files, but it’s not necessary.


Mac’s own and the other CHARACTERSETS:

- Selecting "DOS" or "codepage 437" will convert the text into the german
  codepage of those good old dosaenian ages (kind a like a german program).
  Codepage 437 holds some (german) Umlauts and a lot of this kinky line drawing
  letters, they use to do boxes on dos screens.
  Don’t expect ANYTHING like quotes, dashes etc.

  (That’s why Step Across does some "similar"-conversion.
   Read more about this below...)

- "OS2" or "codepage 850" resp. is very much the same as DOS.
  The characterset holds a certain number of (lowercase) international letters
  (esp. french ones), though - and very few uppercase things.
  Don’t expect anything like quotes, dashes etc.

- Windows, Unix and the Amiga system use very much the same thing, which is
  standarized as "ISO 8859-I". This ISO-thing again looks very much like the
  codepage 850 (only it holds its letters in other places).
  So: Don’t expect anything like quotes, dashes etc.
  You might be interested to hear that Unix often only does 128 ASCII characters,
  which means: no chance for no special characters at no time at all.

  Windows does some more stuff between 128 and 160 and actually they doing
  a very good thing there. Text can be converted between Mac and Windows with
  almost no losses of any kind.
  So: DO EXPECT quotes, dashes, ... everything.

- Atari offers two characters sets. The "TOS"-thing looks much like codepage 850.
  The Speedo thing has quite a few characters to offer.
  So: Do expect quotes, dashes, ... and almost everything.


There is a little word to do about WORD and Windows ASCII:

When I said "Windows" above, I was talking about Windows ASCII.
You will have it imported into the simple "notepad" or MS-Write, as well
as into AmiPro and-for instance-the Windows version of Quark Xpress.
But DO NOT EXPECT MS-Word "for Windows" to zipp your text in as Windows ASCII.
Those doseanian roots, where WORD is still captured in, will cause the software
to import ASCII as "DOS-text" with the limits of codepage 850
(sometimes depending on the setting that was done on the default printer,
 like codepage 437 or... But why not, oh man...?)




The FEATURES of the CONVERSION ENGINE
-------------------------------------

Whatever the engine does, it will not leave a single character aside,
that has a counterpart in the target set of characters.
Line feeds will be converted to the appropriate type.

(You expected this, didn’t you? Ok, this only was the intro for...)


>>Replacement character and "similar" conversion

When a character has no equivalent in the target characterset, there are
several possibilities what will happen:

- "Non convertible characters" will be set to a replacement character,
  which you can set in the configuration dialog.

- But also something else might happen, sounds like this:
  If you do select the "replace missing with similar"-option,
  Step Across will do some work to reproduce the missing character by
  others (and sometimes more than one), to maintain at least the original
  "meaning" of the text.
  The lists at the very bottom of this text tell you exactly, what’s
  going down, if you enable "similar" conversions.


>>Unwrapping and typographic conversion

If you are converting text to the Mac, you might find it pretty stupid to
encounter text in which every line will form a seperate paragraph.

That’s why Step Across does some "unwrapping" for you.
As known from editors like "Edit" or "BBEdit", the result of unwrapping is
not always that desirable... especially if it’s done across an entire text.
There are circumstances where a line feed and a paragraph ending can simply
not be distinguished from one another.

The "unwrapping" machine in Step Across is pretty smart though (hhm!).

In addition, not to spoil text, which is already unwrapped,
it does some checking before action:
A text that looks unwrapped will not be re-unwrapped,
even if the option to do so is set.


The "typographic" part of this option will do some more conversion
for readable (well, lets say: "fashionable") input to the Mac:

- "Hard" hyphens will be removed from the text.
- Double, triple etc. spaces will be replaced by a single space.

- Typewriter quotes (Shift-2) will be converted to typographic ones.
- Double commas or apostrophs (ASCII 39 bzw. 96) are replaced by
  the appropriate typographic quotes.

- Double hyphens will be switched to an em-dash.
- Triple periods will be converted to an ellipsis.

This should beware of the most usual mishabits on codepage 850 etc.


>>What is "missing to similar"?

More or less consequent Step Across will do exactly these replacements
(mentioned just above) to maintain the text’s integrity, if you convert
a text to a system, that does not support quotes etc., if you activate
"missing to similar".

These are some examples of what will happen in these cases:
 1) Accent characters will simply be replaced by the ones without accent.
 2) The "one half" character will turn into the three letters: "1/2".
 3) Double quotes become double commas, apostrophs and so.
 See lists on end of text for exact replacements.



Yet there are some SPECIAL CONVERSIONS waiting for you:

They do so in a dialog yet unmentioned called "special conversions",
which you will find in the options menu.
(This dialog cannot be reached or changed in dragdrop-mode.)

The special conversions allow you to react to those special things people
have done on systems without legal access to quotes etc. You might encounter
some real tricky special solutions for getting quotes etc. on dos machines.
Some of these have for instance helped themselves to obtain
the quotes right off the postscript printer by switching here and there...

So. In this dialog you can enter characters to be converted to quotes
or emdashes on the Mac.
In addition to this you get three absolutely free conversions:
Enter the character you want to hook - and the one it should turn into.

The special conversions can be selected one by one in their dialog,
whatever is set in the special conversions dialog can then be globally
activated or paralysed from the configuration dialog.



Well, that should be it ...






except the "similar conversions" lists:


In direction "to the Mac":

From DOS, Atari-TOS, Unix, Amiga:
The one-half, one-quarter, power-two, power-three signs will be written out
as characters "1/2" etc., "power-two" will turn into "^2".

From Windows:
As "from DOS" plus (’cause they have some eastern european stuff)
- S-caron       => S,
- s-caron       => s,
- y-acute       => y,
- Y-acute       => Y,
- D-stroke      => D.

From OS2:
As "from DOS" plus
- D-stroke      => D,
- y-acute       => y,
- Y-acute       => Y.


Converting "to Other":

To DOS and Atari-TOS:
- ellipsis      => "..." (triple period)
- ndash, mdash  => "--"  (double hyphen)
- quotes        => double commas, apostrophs etc. depending on which quotes.
- fi-ligatur    => "fi"
- fl-ligatur    => "fl"
- dbldagger     => dagger
- perthousand   => "0/00"
- quite a few uppercase accent characters will become the simple uppercase ones.


To Unix, Amiga, OS2:
As "to DOS" plus
- Œ, œ          => "OE", "oe"
- ≤, ≥          => "<=", "=>"


To Windows:
(not much on the do-list there)
- fi-ligatur    => "fi"
- fl-ligatur    => "fl"
- pointless i   => "i"
- ≤, ≥          => "<=", "=>"


Now, this IS it.