Foreign Characters and OS compatibility

rg_stephens · General User Joined: 25 May 2010 Posts: 6

My uncle is using Windows 98 with Word 2002. He is an editor for a newsletter, and I am translating articles to Spanish. I have OpenOffice 3.2 (Ubuntu). So I save in .DOC format. He's computer illiterate, so I can't explain that his software is broke

When I send this:

peterroots · Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 7:51 am Post subject:

I am taking a guess that perhaps the problem is that he does not have a unicode font instaslled - perhaps, if you are using a truetype font you could install the same font on his computer?
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Kubuntu 11.10 LibreOffice3.4.4

rg_stephens · General User Joined: 25 May 2010 Posts: 6

I just realized that I don't have any common fonts installed, only the open source ones that came with my OS. I installed Microsoft TTFonts so that I could use Times New Roman. I'm sure he has that one.

So, his computer substituted a font that coded differently? I just assumed Word should sort things out

peterroots · Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 9:26 am Post subject:

it is possible (and this is stretching my ageing memory) that times new roman from as long ago as win98 days may not contain unicode chars - if you still have probs try installing your new version of times new roman and see if that helps
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Kubuntu 11.10 LibreOffice3.4.4

rg_stephens · General User Joined: 25 May 2010 Posts: 6

When he trys to open it, he just gets symbols on his screen. I found that I can copy/paste in an email, and that works fine. I can't do anything to his compuer, so for now, this will have to do.

Thanks!
Robert

floris_v · Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 12:09 pm Post subject:

Come on, you don't need Unicode for í and é, Ansi is good enough for that. Hell, you could get those characters in DOS.

What version of Word are you saving in? Are you sure that the conversion problem isn't at your end?
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rg_stephens · General User Joined: 25 May 2010 Posts: 6

Hmmm, well,
He send me the english text in an email, and I copied/pasted to OOO. There were grey spaces between some of the letters, but it was readable. I created two columns, and typed the Spanish part into one column. I then saved it as .doc (XP/97) and emailed it. When he emailed it back, it was unreadable. But, I can read my original file just fine. He's 5000 miles away, so I can't diagnose his computer.

So I guess the copy/paste process picks up extra garbage? Maybe next time I should save it as TXT? Clear formatting?

Robert
Ubuntu10.4
OOO 3.2

floris_v · Posted: Wed May 26, 2010 1:35 pm Post subject:

When you view the e-mail, does it look okay? You realise that it's possible that you get the wrong character set in conversion from the e-mail to OOo - for instance if you get ISO 8859-15? - when I view this with ISO 8859-15 I do get Ã@ instead of é.
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rg_stephens · General User Joined: 25 May 2010 Posts: 6

Interesting. Does this mean that I need to change my character encoding to match his computer?

Yes, the email looks fine. When I copy/paste into Open office, there are Grey blocks between some of the words, but otherwise, it's fine.

I'm suspecting that his Win98 computer is broke somehow. Everything opens fine for me (except what he sent back), I even tried it on a computer with Word2002. I'm not too concerned about it.