From: peter@ranui.org.nz
Date: Sat Mar 30 2002 - 21:00:05 EST
This can be quite tricky to do well. Over the years ive crafted a macro in the text
editer i use (TextPAD), and also created the odd perl script. One such script was
used in an email list archive(http://nzpp.virtualave.net/coho/ --its a subroutine in the
'retrieve function' ) to try and clean up the horendous mess you get with a
combination of peoples different email clients line break settings.
With the macro i just paste an email body into the editor, run the macro, then paste in
into word processor or whatever. However i suggest there are traps to this, because
how can you be completely sure that a hard break was original or not?
It works best when the original writer knows how to write and format a paragraph!, ie
a double line break between paras. In this case you just delete all instances of single
newlines (and replace with a space!), but the conflict emerges where there are lists or
bullet items INTENDED to have a newline on each line. In that case you get into
smart-ass guessing games, like is there a fullstop or other punctuation on the beg or
end of the line; does the next line start with a capital letter etc etc.
If anyones interested ill gladly send the perl subroutine, such as it is.
Peter
NZ
> What's the proper way to open or import a text file with hard-coded line
> breaks (contents reproduced below). I want each group of lines that end
> with a blank line to be grouped into a single paragraph. Opening the
> file as "Text" produces an Abi document with poem-like breaks (stanzas,
> rather than paragraphs, of text).
>
> ===BEGIN TEXT BLOCK===
> The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick
> brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox
> jumps over the lazy dog and ends Paragraph 1.
>
> The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick
> brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and ends Paragraph 2.
>
> The story ends with this sentence and so does Paragraph 3.
> ===END TEXT BLOCK===
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Mar 30 2002 - 20:57:24 EST