• Latin character coding. netfetch/Hermes/ Messenger/Iris/StromED

    From Chris Craig@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 26 21:58:18 2022
    Have I got the wrong characters somewhere. Instead of inverted comma (').
    I get on screen & print: Especially if I copy emails into Impression or, Stronged & edit : aren't =aren�-t.. Or is this some evil from Android?

    Chris

    --
    chris.j.craig@btinternet.com
    ARMX6 RISC OS 5.29
    ---

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  • From Steve Fryatt@21:1/5 to Chris Craig on Tue Jul 26 23:14:21 2022
    On 26 Jul, Chris Craig wrote in message
    <6fc73a0e5a.Chris@btinternet.com>:

    Have I got the wrong characters somewhere. Instead of inverted comma (').
    I get on screen & print: Especially if I copy emails into Impression or, Stronged & edit : aren't =aren�-t.. Or is this some evil from Android?

    That looks like UTF-8 Unicode which isn't being decoded/translated into your local encoding correctly.

    Given that UTF-8 is pretty common stuff anywhere but RISC OS, I'd suggest
    that it's not an "evil from Android". Instead, I'd take the controversial
    view that the software which you're using to bring the files into RISC OS (Messenger or Iris?) should be doing a better job of translating it[1] into something that other applications would expect to see.

    1. Or at least the very small subset of it that is supported by the current RISC OS encoding.

    --
    Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England

    http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/

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  • From Harriet Bazley@21:1/5 to Chris Craig on Tue Jul 26 23:25:28 2022
    On 26 Jul 2022 as I do recall,
    Chris Craig wrote:

    Have I got the wrong characters somewhere. Instead of inverted comma (').
    I get on screen & print: Especially if I copy emails into Impression or, Stronged & edit : aren't =arenã€-t.. Or is this some evil from Android?

    I think it's UTF8 encoding, which most RISC OS applications don't
    support.

    I have a ConvText script that does a search-and-replace for various UTF8 characters so that I can actually reply to e-mails in StrongED; I
    believe that recent version of Messenger Pro's internal e-mail editor
    do actually support UTF8, but I have a lot of shortcuts and formatting
    options setup in StrongED.

    --
    Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie ==

    Strategic withdrawal - running away with dignity!

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  • From Chris Newman@21:1/5 to harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk on Fri Jul 29 23:30:27 2022
    In article <aec2420e5a.harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk>, Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> wrote:
    On 26 Jul 2022 as I do recall, Chris Craig wrote:

    Have I got the wrong characters somewhere. Instead of inverted comma
    ('). I get on screen & print: Especially if I copy emails into
    Impression or, Stronged & edit : aren't =aren�-t.. Or is this some
    evil from Android?

    I think it's UTF8 encoding, which most RISC OS applications don't
    support.

    I have a ConvText script that does a search-and-replace for various
    UTF8 characters so that I can actually reply to e-mails in StrongED; I believe that recent version of Messenger Pro's internal e-mail editor
    do actually support UTF8, but I have a lot of shortcuts and formatting options setup in StrongED.

    Sounds good, Harriet. I haven't used ConvText for ages. Do share how it's
    done, please.

    --
    Chris Newman

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  • From Harriet Bazley@21:1/5 to Chris Newman on Sat Jul 30 01:22:58 2022
    On 29 Jul 2022 as I do recall,
    Chris Newman wrote:

    In article <aec2420e5a.harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk>, Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> wrote:

    I have a ConvText script that does a search-and-replace for various
    UTF8 characters so that I can actually reply to e-mails in StrongED; I believe that recent version of Messenger Pro's internal e-mail editor
    do actually support UTF8, but I have a lot of shortcuts and formatting options setup in StrongED.

    Sounds good, Harriet. I haven't used ConvText for ages. Do share how it's done, please.

    ConvText syntax is simply <find string> <colon> <replace string>

    So you run the app, select "New script" from the iconbar menu, which
    will open a blank file with the keyword "SCRIPT:" already entered for
    you, give the new script a name (e.g. "SCRIPT: UTF8"), and then enter
    all your desired substitutions one by one. UTF8 characters are
    generally two bytes wide and translate to a single Latin-1 character. I normally cut and paste the literal strings as I encounter them, but you
    can also encode them in square brackets using their ASCII codes, which
    is safer for Usenet purposes.

    So the translation
    é:� (e-acute)
    can more portably be written
    [195][169]:[233]

    You can add comments using the vertical pipe character, e.g.

    [140]:... |Ellipse to three full stops


    In order to use your new script, simply save the file and make sure your
    new entry is selected in the Scripts sub-menu. Then drag the text you
    want to convert to ConvText's iconbar icon, where it will pop up a
    savebox to be dragged anywhere sensible. What I usually do is start my
    reply in StrongED, select all, drag the selection to ConvText, delete
    the selected text in the StrongED message reply window and drag the
    ConvText savebox back to save the converted text into the now-empty
    window, thus retaining the OLE link from Messenger by keeping the same
    file but updating its contents.

    You could also do something similar from within StrongED itself, by
    updating the News mode to contain a user-defined menu entry that
    performs a set of pre-defined search & replace operations, or by using
    one of the scripting languages (Lua, awk, BASIC, Python, Perl) which
    StrongED knows about in order to apply a script to the contents of the
    current window.

    I did have a reasonably elegant Lua script for StrongED that did a
    general gsub operation with the replacement string simply being a table
    holding the UTF8 translations in it; I had to do two passes, one for
    the two-character substitutions and then another one for the
    three-character substitutions, but it worked. I'm not sure what
    happened to it!


    --
    Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie ==

    He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

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