February 2002
Computing for the Bewildered. By Bill Hayles
Hello again.
Firstly, I'd like to make a plug for a news group I moderate on Yahoo,
the Costa Blanca Expatriates group, which you can join either through
our Rogue's Gallery
or our Home Page at Yahoo:
http://groups.costablancaexpats.net
We have over 550 members (subscribers), chatting about life on the
Costa Blanca. Membership is completely free, although you will need to
obtain a Yahoo i.d. if you don't already have one (you can do this
quickly and easily from http://groups.yahoo.com). You can receive
individual e-mails, a daily "digest" or neither, keeping up with events
purely through the World Wide Web. If you've never joined a newsgroup
or mailing list before, now's your chance to test the water. We won't
bite.
That brings me to this month's topic - text formats. Students at my
Oasis sessions, and costablancaexpats group members know that I'm very
keen on "plain text"; indeed, it's the only format acceptable on the
group. What is "plain text"? Why isn't something written and saved on,
for example, Microsoft Word, "plain text" even if it only consists of
words and numbers?
Plain text is often called ASCII text - the American Standard Code for
Information Interchange. Under this system, letters, numbers,
punctuation etc are given code numbers. Also given codes are formatting
controls, such as "new line", "move to beginning of line" etc.
Therefore, a piece of text can be transmitted as a sequence of numbers,
for example, the word cat would be 99 97 and 116. Note there is no
information about text size or font. You can display plain text in
whatever font suits you. A plain text document will normally have the
file extension .TXT.
So, what are the advantages of plain text?
Firstly, it is universal. For example, an e-mail sent in plain text can
be equally successfully read on a PC, an Apple Mac, a Communicator or a
Web TV. This is why it is the format of choice for most newsgroups and
mailing lists.
Secondly, it is very compact. Because there is no formatting
information, a file of plain text can be less than half the size of an
equivalent file in HTML or Word format.
Thirdly, it is very safe. Because it cannot contain hidden
instructions, it cannot possible contain any malicious code such as a
computer virus.
However, it does have disadvantages.
If you want a document to look a specific way, you need to be able to
define things such as font and size, and maybe colour. You may also
wish to include something such as a drawing. This information is given
as formatting instructions, code contained in the file that is hidden
from view - it doesn't show on the screen. You may be producing a
document for printing into a "hard copy". You may know for certain
that any recipient is using the same hardware and software as you. In
this case, you use what's called a proprietary file format, of which
Rich Text Format is probably the nearest to a universally recognised
format, and Microsoft Word probably the most commonly used, there being
Word readers available for almost all platforms. Unfortunately, the
very power of the Word format means that you have to be careful. It's
perfectly possible for a Word document to launch a virus or other
destructive program on your machine. These are the "Word Macro
Viruses". The good news is that these are well known to, and
understood by, all anti-virus software.
There are many different formats, some more widely recognised than
others. For example, for many years, a file with the extension .DOC
would have been taken to mean a Word Perfect document - Word Perfect
was the number one word processor in the DOS era. Fortunately, many
modern packages can understand and "translate" Word Perfect formats,
but can the same be true of, say, WordStar or Smart? All my early
documents were written using Smart, and would no longer be recognised
by any modern word processor. Fortunately, I converted them to Rich
Text Format before abandoning Smart, but I sometimes wonder just how
many documents there are out there saved to disk in formats that no
modern software will recognise. Another problem with these formats is
that every word processing or "office" program has its own unique
format. I use a suite called "Star Office", which has its own format
with the extension .SDW. If I were to e-mail you a document I have
written in Star Office and saved in default format, the chances are
that you wouldn't be able to decode it. Star Office can save in Word
format, but the conversion, as with many things, is not perfect. Hence,
I'd e-mail it to you as plain text. We've come full circle! ALL word
processing packages can save as text, as well as the dedicated text
editors, such as Notepad which comes with Windows.
On the World Wide Web, you want your web page to look reasonable on as
many remote systems as possible, and HTML, the Hypertext Markup
Language, has been developed to facilitate this. From the start, HTML
has catered for Hyperlinks, hidden instructions behind the code you see
on the page. For example, you may see the words "Click here for the
next page". In the hidden HTML code will be the instruction that if
you click on those words, another page will automatically load.
Unfortunately (again), HTML also had the ability to launch malicious
code. Again, virus checkers will help, but this is the number one
reason why I urge everybody only to use plain text for e-mail. HTML is
a web format. In its own environment, it works. Let's keep it there.
It is NOT a document format. There are many people, myself included,
who won't accept e-mail coded in HTML.
Since you're asking, and if you're not, you should be, I write these
columns in plain text. It is for the Editor of "The Grapevine" (hi, Joe,
how are you finding it) to work out the layout of the magazine, and
which font and size my column is to be published in. Were I to produce
it in any proprietary format, not only might we have a problem with
incompatible formats, but all the formatting would be wasted - Joe
won't be using it. My job is to produce the words - the text. His is
to work out how it will look on the page - the publishing.
My sessions on the basic use of computers continue at the Oasis Centre.
The next dates are Saturdays February 16th, March 2nd and 16th at 1030,
and the subject of the sessions is "Computing for the Bewildered";
we're starting from absolute basics. We'll decide about Easter dates
later. On those Saturdays when there's no formal session, I will be at
The Oasis holding a "surgery", where I will attempt to sort out your
computer problems, large, small and trivial. Everybody is welcome to
all my sessions - there's no charge, and on "formal" days we always
break for free tea or coffee. However, if you're thinking of lugging
your computer into a surgery, please e-mail me first to make sure I'll
be able to look at it.
That's it for this month, but if you have a question you'd like me to
answer in the column,or maybe an idea for a topic, please e-mail it to
questions@billnot.com, If you don't have e-mail, you can always leave
your question at the CopiShop. However, I can't guarantee to answer
questions personally.
Happy surfing, and, if you have been, thanks for reading this.