A trying day...
Dec. 1st, 2001 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI finished the first assignment and am now doing a slow burn with the second.
The document I was sent mixes UTF-8 characters with non-UTF-8 characters. Furthermore, I need to grok the contents of some glossary files that were sent to me, in a variety of formats.
The .PDF glossaries gave up their secrets with little protest. So far so good. Then I ran into the Unicode monster, again.
There are apps out there that understand Unicode (UTF-8) and those that don't. There was a time when you could use some smart tricks with Microsoft "productivity" apps to convert Russian text expressed in Unicode into non-Unicode text.
No more, apparently.
My client sent me an - urk! - Excel file with 2362 terms in it. The fact that it is alphabetized for English terms is easily fixed. The part that's not easily fixed is the fact that Excel does a marginally passable job only as a spreadsheet, not as something you want to search through for terms, or print from.
Ye gods. No matter what I do - and I am far from a tyro in such matters - Excel wants to print the English terms out on one set of pages, and the Russian terms out on another set of pages. Apparently, both columns won't print out on the same page (and there are actually four columns, but who needs abbreviations?)
Wait! I've got it! If I reduce the font size to 6 point, I can get two columns to print on a page. Progress! Yes, by Jove, that's PROGRESS! (Now, if only I could remember where I stowed my magnifying glass...)
Grr. This is rapidly ceasing to be amusing.
So here I am, trying to export the text as text, but Excel exports UTF-8 symbols uniformly as '?', and there's not even an option to save the entries in an RTF file (not that it would make sense, but still).
And all this is in addition to the "Out of Memory" occurrences that are becoming about as common on my VAIO as snowflakes on Pagosa Peak. It seems as if suddenly (within the past couple of weeks), Windows Me really wants me to use just one application at a time. There must be one hell of a memory hog among the apps that I use regularly... I'll put my money (sadly) on Mozilla.
Anyway, it's back to the face of the salt mine (though it's probably time to go pick up Galina from the store).
Cheers...
The document I was sent mixes UTF-8 characters with non-UTF-8 characters. Furthermore, I need to grok the contents of some glossary files that were sent to me, in a variety of formats.
The .PDF glossaries gave up their secrets with little protest. So far so good. Then I ran into the Unicode monster, again.
There are apps out there that understand Unicode (UTF-8) and those that don't. There was a time when you could use some smart tricks with Microsoft "productivity" apps to convert Russian text expressed in Unicode into non-Unicode text.
No more, apparently.
My client sent me an - urk! - Excel file with 2362 terms in it. The fact that it is alphabetized for English terms is easily fixed. The part that's not easily fixed is the fact that Excel does a marginally passable job only as a spreadsheet, not as something you want to search through for terms, or print from.
Ye gods. No matter what I do - and I am far from a tyro in such matters - Excel wants to print the English terms out on one set of pages, and the Russian terms out on another set of pages. Apparently, both columns won't print out on the same page (and there are actually four columns, but who needs abbreviations?)
Wait! I've got it! If I reduce the font size to 6 point, I can get two columns to print on a page. Progress! Yes, by Jove, that's PROGRESS! (Now, if only I could remember where I stowed my magnifying glass...)
Grr. This is rapidly ceasing to be amusing.
So here I am, trying to export the text as text, but Excel exports UTF-8 symbols uniformly as '?', and there's not even an option to save the entries in an RTF file (not that it would make sense, but still).
And all this is in addition to the "Out of Memory" occurrences that are becoming about as common on my VAIO as snowflakes on Pagosa Peak. It seems as if suddenly (within the past couple of weeks), Windows Me really wants me to use just one application at a time. There must be one hell of a memory hog among the apps that I use regularly... I'll put my money (sadly) on Mozilla.
Anyway, it's back to the face of the salt mine (though it's probably time to go pick up Galina from the store).
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2001-12-01 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-12-01 06:14 pm (UTC)I really don't blame clients for submitting documents in the form they do; I do get peeved at software vendors who make it impossible to do anything but what they feel is appropriate with such documents.
Cheers...