OT-ish warning: Apple is still using Mac Roman

[Graham Samuel]

Thanks Richmond, good observe as the Scots say (do you say it? RLS did.)

In my case saving to .doc or any other format isn't on, because I can't predict what my users will do: if someone thinks a dash is a minus sign, then they will copy it regardless - I can't give them elaborate instructions to do an export - they would be ignored, and anyway they wouldn't be in the spirit of "just do it" which this app promotes. I just have to make sure the pasted text that comes into my LC app is more cleverly treated (see my reply to Paul DeRocco, just now). Since it's cross-platform, I also have to accommodate both PC and Mac ways of doing things.

It is quite likely that I did muck up the original input, but more testing and sweat will sort it out, now I know what the issue is.

Thanks again

Graham

On 30 Jan 2014, at 08:52, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 29/01/14 23:40, Graham Samuel wrote:
>> I'm using LC 6.5.1 on a Mac with Mavericks. Recently I was given a Pages document with some text I needed to paste into a LiveCode desktop app.
> 
> You can, save from Pages into Microsoft's ubiquitous .doc format.
> 
> My younger son, who stays in Germany and uses a MacBook, sent me a pages document in that format, I then opened it
> on Linux with Libre Office, and everything came through clearly. So:
> 
> 1. Pages works with the MacRoman standard and converts this to Unicode when it saves to .doc.

Yep, but not when it saves to the clipboard (Copy or Cut).
> 
> or
> 
> 2. Libre Office on Linux opens any .doc document perfectly regardless of its character encoding.
> 
> or
> 
> 3. Pages DOES encode in Unicode.
> 
> I wonder ????
> 
>> The relevant text was:
>> 
>> 3*(-1*x^2 + 4)(-1*x^4 - 5x + 2)
>> 
>> (Don't worry, it's just a meaningless example).
>> 
>> I changed this to plain text (it had originally been coloured and I thought this might affect the result). I then used an LC script to search for some characters, particularly the minus signs. Couldn't find them. Then I realised that I had to put the text string through LC's MactoISO function
> 
> Does Pages use MacRoman, or had you, by putting the text through LC's MactoISO function mucked it about?
> 
>>  - so Pages, far from using UniCode (I thought everybody was doing it) is still using the old Mac character set. LC, even on a Mac, apparently isn't. The thing is, the pasted text **looks** OK in an LC field, but it's not.
>> 
>> Just a gotcha that surprised me and may bite someone else.
>> 
>> I'm wondering if LC 7 will take this kind of problem away. I'm also wondering what Apple are up to still using a proprietary character code. And I'm wondering if I should have tried to do the whole thing with Unicode text.
> 
> Unfortunately I'm at work where everything runs on Linux. However, when I get home this evening I shall dig out my macMini
> (which has a licensed version of Pages running on it) and see what is going on.
> 
> This:
> 
> http://www.apple.com/mac/pages/compatibility/#text
> 
> is remarkably unhelpful as it is written for people who are interested in typing documents rather than transferring the end results
> into happy little places such as an LC field. There is NO mention of |the U word" (Unicode).
> 
> Richmond.
>> 
>> Graham
>> _______________________________________________