[softwarelist] Re: Ovation Pro 2.92 (19 January 2007) Windows

In message <45B5C5DA.1070806@xxxxxxxx>
          Clive Bonsall <C.Bonsall@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> David Pilling wrote:
>> In message <45B1F14B.2070606@xxxxxxxx>, Clive Bonsall
>> <C.Bonsall@xxxxxxxx> writes
>>> One answer to your question, perhaps, is provided by the different
>>> behaviour of small caps between OPW and MSWORD.
>> 
>> If MS Word does change the characters then it would not be as good a
>> system as OP, because in general you would not be able to remove the
>> effect - well it depends how clever they are with applying and removing
>> effects, but your example of copying to the clipboard illustrates the
>> problem.
> 
> That is the intersting thing ... MS Word (and WordPad) is able to
> recognize that (its own) small caps is lower case with an effect
> applied, and is able to remove it again. But to other programs (Notepad,
> OPW) it appears as caps.

Obviously, transfer to most other programs is via unformatted plain 
text, so MSWord has to take a decision there. It decides to export 
text with small caps applied in uppercase because that most closely 
resembles the way it looks. That does not mean that the underlying 
text in Word is in uppercase - and it clearly is not because you can 
remove the Small caps effect, which restores the text to its original 
appearance. So, inside MSWord it is an effect precisely as in 
OvationPro (and MSWord has an "Uppercase" effect, too, which OP does 
not have).

The only difference is that when you save some text with Small caps 
applied as plain text from OvationPro it is not converted to 
uppercase.

With the "Small caps" effect it is debatable which is the better way. 
It is a bit clearer with MSWord's "Uppercase" effect: Surely, if the 
text appears all uppercase, most users would be surprised if exporting 
it showed lowercase characters? On the other hand, the underlying 
characters may well be lowercase (as demonstrated by removing the 
effect). I guess, this is a typical case of the MS mentality: Always 
do what causes the least surprise to the naive even if it leads to 
inconsistencies that puzzle those who are in the know.

Martin
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Martin Wuerthner          MW Software          martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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