Polish characters again

From: January Weiner 3 (jweiner1@ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de)
Date: Thu Apr 25 2002 - 07:05:29 EDT

  • Next message: Alan Horkan: "Re: Fwd: Help - DDE"

    Hi,

    > > However, this did not work for me when it came to print to
    > > PostScript and export the RTFs. Damned! I thought.
    > >
    >
    > As far there were no needs for me to export abi docs to RTF, so I did not
    > experienced such dammed things. I use an old HP LaserJet4L for printing,
    > made few test and prints look OK.

    Now, this is funny. It might be that some parts of my system are broken.
    If I use abiword-gtk, use the iso-8859-1 to iso-8859-2 substitution in the
    fonts.dir file and the original Type 1 Abiword fonts, then I get
            1) polish characters on the screen
            2) corresponding latin-1 characters in the generated postscript
            file (that is, no polish characters in print).

    If I use abiword-gnome, then independently of what I do I get empty squares
    on the printout instead of any characters I type (it doesn't matter wheter
    those are latin-1 or latin-2 characters etc.). Therefore I thing that
    there's something wrong with my gnome installation.

    > What is followed below is, as far as I'm concerned, a wonderful piece of
    > computer commands and science. I feel myself in this field like a blind

    It's a wonderfull example how to make easy things complicated, really.

    > > # create fonts.dir and fonts.scale. Requires ttmkfdir!
    > > ttmkfdir | tail +2 | grep "iso8859-2" > pipa
    > > cat pipa | wc -l | sed "s/ *//" > fonts.dir
    > >
    >
    > I know what is ttmkfdir, but used it with a simple option "-o" or ">"
    > only. What you're doing here is a black magic in the night. I do not
    > understand what is all about. What means here "tail +2", or "wc -l". I
    > can only see the final sens of what have been done. Please explain
    > shortly.

    Well, this is just Unix. It is nice to find a Unix user who does not know
    what tail / wc / redirection etc. are. That shows that Linux is ready for
    the desktop, really :-)

    OK, step by step (hope you gurus out there don't mind):

    > > tail +2 fonts.dir > pipa

    tail is a standard text processing command. tail +2 prints out a text file
    starting from the second line (tail -2 would print out the file starting
    from the second line counting from the end of the file). The file to be
    processed is fonts.dir, and the result is redirected ('>') to the temporary
    file called 'pipa' (which is something like the english 'foo', just a word
    to use when you don't know what word to use).

    > > # substitute font names with font names + " CE"
    > > cat pipa | perl -p -e 's/(.*ttf -[^-]*-)([^-]*)(-.*)/\1\2 CE\3/' >>

    cat prints out a file to standard output, '|' redirects it to another
    command following the '|'. In this case, the command is perl, an
    interpreter of the Perl programming language. What follows is a
    substitution of anything in the form

    (something1)ttf -(something2)-(some-thing3)

    for example:

    Arialn.ttf -monotype-Arial Narrow-medium-r-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-2

    to something in the form of

    (something1)ttf -(something2) CE-(some-thing3)

    for example:

    Arialn.ttf -monotype-Arial Narrow CE-medium-r-condensed--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-2

    These funny '.*' etc. are so-called regular expressions (regexps), which
    allow extremly powerfull search & replace operations, and it's a real shame
    that Abiword does not support it yet. Even Word has its own brand of
    regexps. Regexps are common or very similar in most of the relevant Unix
    programs.

    > hundreds more. All of them create a wide palette of colors for one
    > rainbow: KOBIETA : WOMAN : MY LOVE.

    Where I come from, pipa means something quite different, although it can be
    used in such a connotation by an extremly rude person. I use it as a STW
    (Standarized Test Word).

    > Fatalnie, J. I want to help you exporting RTF, but do not know how can do
    > it. I'm shure that finaly you'll get it or maybe there is some one who
    > knows it, will come in here and show the right door for exporting.

    Well, Abiword has a far way to go, and I really think that calling this
    release "1.0" was a little premature -- this is not typical for Linux,
    where even rock-stable, bug-free versions still have sometimes major
    version number '0', but common for the Windows world, where every other
    beta release gets a "1.0" stamp. But I don't really care, and if that
    should help Abiword spread -- fine by me.

    Regards,
    j.

    ----)-\//-///-----------------------------------January-Weiner-3-------
    Lepiej jest być głupim z nadziej±, niż bez nadziei niem±drym
    - człowiek się swobodniej czuje.

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