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

In message <25e5aea94e.martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
          Martin Wuerthner <public@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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.

Not quite accurate. I had a play with Word a couple of days ago. I put 
some text into Small caps. Saved as .DOC as .RTF and as .TXT and 
opened each in a text editor (could have been Zap or StrongEd but I 
chose Textpad on the PC). I also highlighted the text and copied it to 
the clipboard, then ran clipbrd (the Clipbook viewer) and saved the 
contents as .CLP and opened this in Textpad. The .CLP file has the 
text which was copied in a number of formats - ASCII, HTML, RTF, Word 
binary ....

> 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 word .DOC file does indeed contain the text in lower case and 
seems to hide the Small Caps effect in the binary at head or tail of 
the file.

The TXT file has the Small Caps words in CAPS

I don't now remember how the RTF file rendered in Wordpad (and my son 
is using the PC for A level work just now).

> 
> 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.
> 

Anthony

-- 
Anthony Hilton
ajh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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