Re: Save text for Windows

At 12:53 -0700 5/18/08, Bill Rowe wrote:
>On 5/18/08 at 12:26 PM, greyna <at> socal.rr.com (Greg Reyna) wrote:
>
>>What's the best way to save a text file that's meant to be opened on
>>a Windows machine?  I want to preserve the formatting of a simple
>>text file with spaces, tabs and new lines.
>
>First, replace all tabs with an appropriate number of spaces. This avoids issues with tab settings
reflecting a different number of spaces in different clients.

If you do that be sure it still looks OK in BBEdit. And be sure you add something that insures that the Windoze
user will know to use a monospaced font.

Non-programmers will use a text processing program that allows for tab settings that vary across a line the
way a mechanical typewriter works. If you have used multiple tab characters to move between columns when
some are shorter - text wise - you have a problem that BBEdit may not handle. Replacing \t\t+ with \t in grep
mode might work but it depends on software at the destination. MS-Excel, for instance, demands single tab
characters between columns and has a terrible time with added spaces when the text has spaces inside the
contents of a column.

Bill Rowe continued:
>Set the line endings to be consistent with Windows (CRLF)

That's approved. The choice is a button at the very bottom of each document window. But a lot of destination
software doesn't really care.

If the recipient needs only to read the text with his eyeballs consider "printing" to PDF.

-- 

--> From the U S of A, the only socialist country that refuses to admit it. <--

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