Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac 1993 September/September 93.iso/Archives/Utilities/Text/Overwood 2.01/Notes & Test

Text File | 1988-01-23 | 16KB | 320 lines

     Overwood is a Macintosh search-and-replace utility intended for use
in desktop publishing environments. It seeks out several things that are
typical of word-processed textfiles and converts them to a more widely
acceptable typographic format. A list of the ten operations performed by
Overwood, along with a few words about the limitations of each of them,
can be found at the end of these notes.

    This program is not a typesetting application. It does not produce files
suitable for being sent to a LaserWriter. Its output is not beautiful. Its
sole purpose is to make it easier for YOU to do the job of making a
word-processed document beautiful. The author hopes that it will help
you, and, if it does, he also hopes that you won't mind sending him $5.00
for it.

    ============================================================

    Version 2.0 of Overwood introduces a number of modifications and
the most obvious ones were prompted by my confusions about Switcher.

    For example, at the end of a run Overwood puts up two buttons and
asks the user whether he wants to quit or go on to another file. When
Overwood runs by itself, you MUST click on one or the other of these
buttons. It didn't occur to me that you could use Switcher to jump into
another program without clicking on either button, and the problem was
that clicking on one of these two buttons was what closed the output
file. So the user could switch to MS Word and try to open the file; Word
would hit a -49 error ("File already open for writing") and put up a
"Serious disk error" message. This has been fixed, and the file is now
closed whether you push a button or not. (I do think, though, that Word
might have said something like "Go back and close the file, dummy,"
instead of just declaring "Serious disk error" and throwing in its cards.)

    For another example, if you switched away from Overwood leaving a
modal dialog open on the screen and then later switched back and tried to
dismiss the dialog, bombs would sometimes fall. I don't believe this
problem was confined to Overwood; I have successfully crashed six
other programs including MacPaint and MacDraw that way--but ONLY
with Switcher version 5.l. Switcher 5.0.l never seemed to complain about
such behavior, and I don't know what was broken in 5.0.1 that needed to
be fixed in 5.1.

    So, not unnaturally, when I heard of the coming of MultiFinder, my
first thought was that I was in for a whole new batch of headaches and I
took the cowardly step of trying to make Overwood more self-reliant.

    • The main reason for recommending the use of this program with a
word processor or paging program under Switcher was that you may not
be able to tell which of Overwood's routines should be performed on a
file until you see it. So now you can open Overwood's very own Peeper
window and preview (but not edit) the first couple of pages of a
file--just enough to determine whether CRs need stripping and, if so,
what the typical paragraph format is. This is actually MUCH FASTER than
using Switcher, especially if your WP is one that, like MacWrite, goes
through a long "conversion" song and dance before showing you a textfile.

    • You will no longer have to look at all of the default settings before
processing every file; you'll see them only when you want to see them.
You can change them to your liking and leave them alone forever, but it's
still easy to make temporary changes that will apply only to the next
file processed.

    • Indents are handled a little better. The earlier version would remove
the original indents well enough, but it didn't seem to report on them very
accurately. Worse, if you instructed it to leave the indents alone, it
would apparently ignore you. (It was actually trying to do its job, but the
routines that deal with carriage returns were interfering with it; they
now mind their own business.)

    • When substituting the em dash for the conventional doubled-hyphen,
the program now restricts its activities to sequences of exactly two
hyphens. (The previous version would substitute the dash for the last two
of any sequence of hyphens.)

    • The "smart quotes" routines now try to leave expressions like 6'4"
alone.

    • Output files are named in a more rational manner.

    ===========================================================

    I think this version is more useful than its predecessor, but it's worth
emphasizing that the files it produces are no prettier. They will all need
extensive doctoring (though considerably less than their originals) either
in a word-processing program or in a paging program, before they can be
considered worthy of being read, let alone printed. To cushion the shock
of looking at one of them for the first time, you should be prepared to
set a provisional global paragraph indent, even if you don't propose to use
indents in your final job.

    To get started:

    1. Launch Overwood. You will see three menus in addition to the Apple
Menu.

    2. Take this opportunity to go to the Settings Menu and select the first
item, "Change Defaults..." This will bring up a box showing you
the default settings for NINE of Overwood's ten operations. You can
change them to your liking, either permanently or ad hoc.

    3. The second item in the menu, "Set Creator Signature...," allows you
to assign Overwood's output files to a given editor or word processor so
that double-clicking on the file's icon will launch the corresponding
application and open the file for editing. If you don't change this setting,
Overwood's files will look and behave like MacWrite text-only
documents, but you'll be able to open them from within almost any
editing program.

    4. Next, choose "Open..." from the File Menu. This will present the
standard file selection dialog box exhibiting only files of type TEXT.
Select one.

    5. When you've chosen a file to work on, you'll be asked what to do
about the TENTH routine, the handling of carriage returns. Because
paragraph formats vary so widely, Overwood can only do its best; it will
try to remove MOST of the carriage returns that you don't want while
leaving in MOST of the returns that you do want. But it's a judgment call;
depending on the length of the file and on its complexity, you'll have to
decide whether it will be more tedious to remove all the unwanted
returns manually or to put some back in manually when Overwood messes
up.

    6. If you haven't previewed the file, you may not know how to respond
to the questions about returns. In that case, you can click on the Peep
button. This will allow you to preview (but not to edit) the first few
pages of a textfile, just enough to decide whether it will be worthwhile
to ask Overwood to remove carriage returns. If you decide to let
Overwood remove the returns, be sure to observe the MOST TYPICAL
paragraph format; i.e., whether paragraphs are separated by blank lines
or by indents.

    7. While inspecting the Peeper display, if you see anything that causes
you to think twice about any of your default settings, you can go to the
Settings Menu and make a "one time only" change. If you then pull down the
menu a second time, you'll notice that temporary changes are not
reflected in the checkbox settings, but Overwood will remember them
and execute them just once. (If you do look at the settings a second time,
remember to click on "Cancel" instead of "OK." Clicking "OK" will wipe
out your one-time change and substitute the currently displayed
settings--i.e., the default settings--for your own selections.)

    8. When you dismiss the Peeper, you should then be able to respond to
the questions about paragraph formats. Click on "OK" to run the program.

    =============================================================

    WARNING: When the "Finito!" dialog appears, you may safely jump to
another program, because the output file has been closed. FOR THIS
REASON, YOU SHOULD RESIST ANY URGE TO REOPEN THE OUTPUT FILE AND
PEEP AT IT. You can see a far nicer display in a word processor than in
Overwood. Worst of all, YOU RUN THE RISK OF SWITCHING AWAY FROM AN
OPEN FILE, possibly giving rise to the problems mentioned above. Closing
the Peeper window DOES NOT close the file, because in the ordinary
course of events the Peeper leads into the program rather than away
from it; in order to close the file, you would have to: go to the File Menu
and "Quit" from Overwood; or else close the Peeper window AND ALSO
click "Cancel" on the dialog box that follows it.

    =============================================================

    9. Overwood's output file will have the same name as the original file,
plus an extension; the extension will be a serial number indicating the
order in which the output files were produced. For example, if you run
"ThisFile" through Overwood, then decide to change some of the default
settings and run it again, you will find three files on your disk: ThisFile,
ThisFile.1, and ThisFile.2. I can't think of any reason to run one of these
output files through Overwood a second time--but suppose you do so
inadvertently. The genealogy of the file will be obvious from its name: e.g.,
ThisFile.2.1 will designate a file generated by reprocessing ThisFile.2.

    SCHEDULE OF ROUTINES

    • Insert Quotes and Insert Apostrophes--These operations do just
about what you'd expect, converting typewriter-style symbols into
apostrophes and opening and closing single and double quotes. They are
generally quite reliable, having trouble chiefly with words that begin
with apostrophes ('Twas 'orrible, Mr. 'olmes!). They will also sometimes
mishandle a closing quote mark that IMMEDIATELY follows a numeral,
i.e., without any intervening punctuation. This one's fairly rare, and easy
to check: once you're in your word processor, search for the ditto mark; there won't be many of them left, and you can verify their occurrences.

    • Insert Em Dashes--Simply converts any sequence of precisely two
hyphens to the em dash.

    • Insert En Dashes--The en dash is most commonly used to connect
numbers, so this routine, though listed fourth, is actually run after the
following operation. The en dash will also normally be used for the minus
sign, and it will sometimes be used when a typist has tried to represent
the em dash by something other than the conventional doubled-hyphen.

    • Lowercase L to #1--Will find and correct most instances of the
letter being used in place of the numeral. It will mishandle the letter <l>
used as the label for an item in a lettered list, and I think it also has
trouble with words like "llama," but I forget what it does to them. If
Overwood reports only one or two of these in a file of 50K or so, you
should consider them suspect and use your word processor to verify
occurrences of the numeral; but if it reports a dozen, the changes are most
likely good ones.

    • Use Available Ligatures--Attempts only to substitute the ligatured
forms of <fi> and <fl>. If they're missing from the LaserWriter font you
choose, no harm is usually done. If your word processor's default font is
Geneva, for example, the ligatures will show up on screen as empty boxes;
but when you change to a PostScript font (other than Courier) the boxes
will be converted into either the ligatured form of the letter-pair or the
combination of individual letters. This holds good for the resident fonts of
the LaserWriter Plus; it may not be true of laser fonts from all suppliers.

    • Remove Hard Hyphens--Works fine with files in which manually
inserted hyphens are followed immediately by hard returns. Also works
well when the hard hyphens are followed by spaces (e.g., in order to
produce justified text with MacWrite)--BUT because these latter cases
are essentially no different from expressions like "a ten- (hyphen+space)
or twelve-minute solo," Overwood will mangle such expressions,
producing instead "a tenor twelve-minute solo."

    • Remove Extra Spaces--Condenses every string of two or more
spaces to a single space. Useful with files that have been
pseudo-justified by the inclusion of extra spaces between words. It also
performs an invaluable service to typography by reducing the two spaces
that almost all typists put between sentences.

    • Remove Indents--Lets you trash the original typist's indenting
scheme so that you can more easily set your own. NOTE: This routine
depends in part on the previous one; it expects to find only one space left
when it runs around removing indents. What it does, therefore, is remove
either a tab character or ONE space from the beginning of paragraphs. Bit
of room for future improvement here.

    • Strip carriage returns--As mentioned above, this just does its best.
It will do a pretty good job with straight text. If the text includes much
tabular material, it's up to you to weigh the relative advantages of
invoking this operation; chewed-up tables may or may not be easily
repaired by inserting returns at strategic points.

    Here's how to determine which of the carriage-return options to use:
(1) With single-spaced files there's no problem. If most paragraphs are
separated by blank lines, choose "By blank lines"; If most paragraphs are
indented, choose "By indents." If most paragraphs are indented AND ALSO
separated by blank lines, choose either one. (2) With double-spaced files,
if the paragraphs are typically indented, choose "By indents." (3) If a
double-spaced file is NOT indented, e.g., if paragraphs are separated by
four or five blank lines, we're in trouble. Overwood can help you only if
you're willing to go into the file beforehand and insert indents at the
breaks. (A tab or a single space character will do the trick; then CLOSE
THE FILE before switching.) With a long file of straight prose, this
technique is definitely worth the trouble: you'll be manually inserting
three or four spaces per page in order to avoid deleting 20 to 25 returns
per page. With files of other descriptions . . . ?

    With a file largely composed of numbered paragraphs (numbers at the
margin with ALL lines of text indented), your best bet is to hope that the
paragraphs are separated by blank lines and, if so, choose that option.
There are lots of ways to produce this effect: tabbing each line, using the
space bar for each line, changing the ruler, hanging the first line, etc. If
you choose "By blank lines," Overwood seems to handle most of these
variations with the fewest mistakes (though with some of them you may
have to reset a tab here and there). If you choose "By indents," then of
course NONE of the first lines will be handled correctly (because they all
have numbers at the margin), but the body of the paragraph may be OK.
It is, in short, a bummer.

    ======================================================

    If you've used these notes to test the program, you may have noticed
that Overwood reported changing two lowercase Ls to the numeral 1.
Depending on whether you're reading this before or after running
Overwood on it, and depending on the font you're reading it in, they may
or may not be easy to locate; the first two occurrences of the number
were originally typed using the letter.

    Jim Donnelly
    College of Education
    University of Maryland
    College Park, MD 20742
    ©1988 J. B. Donnelly

    I've got to call this version 2.01, I guess, because it has the following
three changes from 2.0:

    1. You can open the Peeper window more than once without having to go
to the menu and reselect the file--just click on the Peep button.

    2. Because MultiFinder lets you see some of the inner workings of a
program, and because files with names like "Scratch File" look ugly on
the desktop, Overwood now uses the output file's correct name throughout.

    3. Finder 6.0 no longer tolerates icons that change into something else
when selected; what appears on the screen instead is a mess. (This is a
terrible shame, in my opinion. Such an icon was one of Red Ryder's chief
glories, and I had a substitute icon for PageMaker files in which Oliver
Hardy turns into Stan Laurel; it actually looked pretty good with the older
Finders.) To avoid the mess, Overwood's typewriter icon now simply highlights when selected.