From: Martin Sevior (msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Aug 23 2002 - 00:14:20 EDT
On Fri, 2002-08-23 at 12:53, Hal Vaughan wrote:
> I have a HUGE archive of Word Perfect files and since I've changed to OSS, I
> naturally want to not just convert them, but make them as accessible as I
> can. I've lost data before due to bad conversions or when I thought one
> format was easily converted and prematurely gave up access to the older
> program that could handle an older format.
>
> I've noticed that AbiWord does the BEST conversions of WP files I've seen (My
> files are in WP 7/8/9 format -- that's how WP shows it in lists). I've
> noticed a side effect of the conversions, though. My files are primarily
> video scripts, which means the margin can change MANY times in one page.
> While Abi has no trouble with the margin changes, when I convert a WP file to
> Abi, if I have to export it, there is trouble. I took several script files
> and went through the process of converting them to AbiWord, then to other
> formats (mostly RTF, M$ Word, and Star Office 6.0). I noticed that when I
> exported these files, every margin change resulted in a new page. A script
> that was 130 pages was suddenly over 2100 pages!
>
> I borrowed a friend's laptop with Word 2000 on it and took parts of some
> scripts and converted them from WP to Word, then converted them to AbiWord.
> There was no problem with the margin-change = new-page problem. I looked at
> the actual file in a text editor to compare them.
>
> What I found that seems to make the difference is that the import from Word
> seems to only use <section></section> tags at pages or similar major changes.
> The WP import seems to use <section> tags every time there is a margin
> change. It seems to me it is these <section> tags that are causing not only
> a margin change, but also a new page when AbiWord files are imported into
> other word processors.
>
> I've noticed the props can be set in a <p> tag as well as in a section tag.
> I've got 2 thoughts on this: 1) If I write a perl script that will go through
> the file and take the props set in the <section> tags and set them in <p>
> tags instead, then remove all the <section> tags, will that cause any
> problems? 2) Is there any (simple) way to take care of this in AbiWord? I
> would think it would simply be a matter of not using <section> tags unless
> necessary and setting all the props in <p> tags. Is that as simple as it
> sounds? (I'm not a professional programmer, so I realize what sounds easy to
> me may be a nightmare in C or C++).
>
Hi Hal,
Thanks for your very detailed description of the problem.
I will forward it to the abiword-dev amiling list. We have Will Lachance
and Marc Maurier have done the work on the Wprd Perfect importer and
will be very interested in your comments.
Just a brief clarification. Margins can be set per paragraph ( the <p>
tag) or per page (the <section> tag). We may be screwing up on export
by making new sections start on new pages by default.
I'll investigate.
One more request. Could file this bug report in our bugzilla?
http://bugzilla.abisource.com/
Thanks!
Martin
Margin changes require a section. It appears we are not correctly
setting the section properties on export to different file formats and
in particular RTF.
Could please enter this bug into
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