[dq-rules] Re: A note about format

["John M. Kahane" <jkahane@comnet.ca>]

      Hullo, JohnR,

>On Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:26:02 -0800, John Rauchert wrote:

>Sorry to be a stick in the mud but with plain text we lose any emphasis
>that we want to add to text primarily Bold and Italics.  Also I always
>have a problem with hard carriage returns and varying column widths
>that tend to enter into documents.

     While I agree with you about the carriage returns and the
varying column widths, that can be cleaned up by setting a series of
rules and parameters for the text files.   Insofar as bold, italics,
and the like are concerned, just put an <i> or <b> or <indented
paragraph> note into the document in the correct places to set up
pre-format appearance and parameters for later.

>It can make final layout hell when you have to remove those extra
>carriage returns from every line. Rodger has some war stories about
>that.  That is why I suggested RTF.  It allows for a minimum amount of
>formatting (leaves bolding and italics intact) and it wraps so you can
>more easily pour it into a layout package like pagemaker.

>I believe that most word processors on most platforms support RTF.

      While this is true about RTF, some word processors can't
accomodate newer versions of RTF.   I'm sure we can do something
about this minor problem, however...

... The basilisk is nature's own way of getting stoned.

       JohnK
       jkahane@comnet.ca
       http://www.comnet.ca/~jkahane