Zacha, you say in your guide that rtf can be read by SimpleText on os 9 but actually I don't believe this is true. I'm pretty sure that OS 9 does not come with any program that can read rtf documents, so the only option for true compatibility is html. Although don't like the idea of having to open a browser just to view a read me (on OS X this isn't really an issue, but I'd complain if I was on OS 9). Aargh, what format should I use?

Guy, on Oct 18 2005, 08:48 PM, said:

Zacha, you say in your guide that rtf can be read by SimpleText on os 9 but actually I don't believe this is true. I'm pretty sure that OS 9 does not come with any program that can read rtf documents...View Post

That is correct. It might actually work best to use Windows-formatted text. It works perfectly on Windows, it seems to display fine in TextEdit, and the only problem in SimpleText is that you get a stray hollow box at the beginning of each line. It might also be worth playing around with particular formattings of text (say, UTF-8, rather than MacRoman).

Edwards

Attached File(s)

• UTF8Doc.txt (91bytes)
  Number of downloads: 21

The UTF-8 gives hollow boxes instead of line breaks in SimpleText, so that's no good. I tried "Windows Latin 1" but that gives the same problem. How can I make it Windows-formatted like you describe?

Guy, on Oct 19 2005, 12:59 AM, said:

The UTF-8 gives hollow boxes instead of line breaks in SimpleText, so that's no good. I tried "Windows Latin 1" but that gives the same problem. How can I make it Windows-formatted like you describe?View Post

The only way I know of for sure is to make the file on Windows. It seems odd that UTF-8 would make hollow boxes instead of line breaks- I would have expected to get both, or for it to work perfectly well in SimpleText. I'll play around with formats, Classic, VirtualPC, and HexEdit sometime when I have more than an hour to spare.

Edwards

Okay. I'm thinking it might be best just to include a SimpleText txt file as well as an rtf. Also that way I won't have to put up with crappy plain text.

This post has been edited by Guy : 20 October 2005 - 01:53 AM

Why is it that a plain text file cannot be used? Plain old text. Works fine on either platform, does it not?

Nope, see Zacha's distribution guide for an explanation.

I'm liking the idea of two files. I can have a "Read Me (mac).txt" and a "Read Me (win).rtf" with platform specific install instructions. This seems like the best way to do it and I'd recommend it to everyone else (unless Edwards comes up with something). Then use zip to compress it (ad: my Plugin Archiver utility ) as it's way easier for windows users*.

• My friend has had great heartache in trying to get StuffIt Expander to work. Firstly it seems that although Allume says it is free it will give constant delays on startup with registration reminders. Then it killed his system and it took him a while to fix it. And lastly there seemed to be no "MacBinary Fork Encoding" option when right-clicking on the file (was this removed in the latest version?). But we all know Allume sucks anyway - ever since they took over from Aladdin there have been serious issues with each new release. StuffIt 10 seems to break compatibility with previous version of Expander and also gives worse compression.

Stuffit 10? Man, I'm late.

Oops! Indeed, SimpleText cannot open rtf. On the other hand, AppleWorks can.

As for plain text, you already know the issues. Windows-type text files (more accurately, the CR-LF line ending) can be obtained from some very specific editors who have this option on the Mac (like, Project Builder/XCode). Most of which you wouldn't like to use or aren't free. Plain text files created by TextEdit use a LF (no CR) line ending, which SimpleText represents as a box, and since there is no CR, no line break. The encoding is another story entirely; SimpleText expects MacRoman, so non-base-ASCII (i.e. 0-9, a-z, A-Z, all usual punctuation, $*_#@|...) chars will show up as two or more other non-base-ASCII chars, just like when you try to open it as MacRoman with TextEdit. And most Windows text editors will themselves assume Win-Latin-1, yet other chars will appear. There is no way in hell for an editor to know in which encoding a text file is, and each platform generally expects a different encoding, so we can only use base ASCII chars in plain text ReadMes... which is another reason it's a bad idea.

Guy, on Oct 20 2005, 04:58 PM, said:

StuffIt 10 seems to break compatibility with previous version of Expander and also gives worse compression.

I'm so glad I haven't upgraded yet. Now I'll find out if this "Disable" button actually works.

Zacha what do you think of this as a 'recommended' way to do things?

Guy, on Oct 21 2005, 09:58 AM, said:

I'm liking the idea of two files. I can have a "Read Me (mac).txt" and a "Read Me (win).rtf" with platform specific install instructions. This seems like the best way to do it and I'd recommend it to everyone else (unless Edwards comes up with something). Then use zip to compress it (ad: my Plugin Archiver utility ) as it's way easier for windows users.
View Post

I don't have anything besides a way to fake Windows encoding if you have MacOS X and Classic (see attached document).
I haven't tried any unusual characters, but shouldn't the first 128 work perfectly on any platform, whatever encoding the file uses?

Edwards

Attached File(s)

• Windized.txt (1005bytes)
  Number of downloads: 21

Or you can use LineBreak to convert to what you want. But whatever, you can't avoid the boxes in SimpleText and you can't use styled text. Unless you have two files.

Can SimpleText read Word documents?
Assuming one doesn't have Word itself, Wordpad in Windows can read them and TextEdit on OS X can too. It's been a while since I've used a machine with OS 9...

We try to stay away from proprietary file formats if it's not necessary, hence Word is a no, especially as there are in fact a gazillion of versions of this format (for each version of Word). The same goes for Word Perfect, Mac Write (II), Word Star, or anything else you might be thinking of. Rtf, though developped by Microsoft, is better documented (or in some cases, is documented at all) and better supported, especially for writing.

Guy, sorry, but I don't really like the idea of two files. It introduces confusion for the user, and would break symmetry since rtf supports styled text while txt doesn't, which would make Mac users wonder why they don't get styled text. Especially as the .txt you would create would have problems with SimpleText anyway (boxes with line breaks if created on Windows, boxes without line breaks if created with TextEdit).

Edwards: yes, the first 128 work perfect regardless of the encoding since they are the base ASCII chars I was speaking of before... Of course, the first 32 are control chars that aren't useful except for line breaks and tabs.

Zacha Pedro, on Oct 22 2005, 07:04 AM, said:

Guy, sorry, but I don't really like the idea of two files. It introduces confusion for the user, and would break symmetry since rtf supports styled text while txt doesn't, which would make Mac users wonder why they don't get styled text. Especially as the .txt you would create would have problems with SimpleText anyway (boxes with line breaks if created on Windows, boxes without line breaks if created with TextEdit).
View Post

Ah, but if you make the .txt file with SimpleText then you don't get hollow boxes and you do get styled text, which is precisely why I think it's good. Plus you can write platform specific installation instructions which makes it easier for the user. Have a look at the EV Nova Override Update which I've done this with. Do you still think it's bad?

See here's what we have:
HTML works on all platforms but IMO this isn't really suitable for a read me. This leaves a SimpleText document as the only format that will display nicely in classic. OS X can also view this fine but it's not so nice on windows. Notepad can't view it properly which means you can't just double click to open it but must specifically open it with WordPad. But even in WordPad you lose any styling and also may have character problems if you've used characters outside the first 128 (eg. bullets). Plus, by default WordPad doesn't wrap plain text files which is really annoying. So the only way you can make it all work nicely is to have both a SimpleText document for mac and a rich text document for windows.

This post has been edited by Guy : 21 October 2005 - 05:06 PM

Guy, on Oct 21 2005, 09:56 PM, said:

Ah, but if you make the .txt file with SimpleText then you don't get hollow boxes and you do get styled text, which is precisely why I think it's good. Plus you can write platform specific installation instructions which makes it easier for the user. Have a look at the EV Nova Override Update which I've done this with. Do you still think it's bad?
View Post

The thing is, .txt only supports raw text, not styled text. Where is the styling information of SimpleText's text files then? Well, I'll tell you. In the resource fork (a 'styl' resource, more accurately). I think I can see terror in your eyes. The implications of this are left as an exercise for the reader.

I don't think it's bad, I think it's not ideal. Of course, given the crazy situation we are in, nothing is ideal, and your solution is one that has its merits and is far from bad, but of two evils I prefer the lesser: have the fewest people (sorry, but OS9 is currently the least used platform by Nova users by my inaccurate estimates) have to use AppleWorks instead of the usual text reader, rather than having clueless people (by most estimates a strong minority, if not a majority, of computer users, even Nova users) read the wrong ReadMe and other peculiar problems.

Therefore, I don't think I can recommand it. If you know what you are doing Guy you're free to use this scheme, but there are too many ways a plug dever can fail to deliver this: it's impossible to do for Windows users and OSX users without Classic support (they're on the horizon...), and there are just too many ways the resource fork of the SimpleText file can get nuked (for instance, when doing .bin.zip and not .binning the .txt) even for Mac users, depriving them of the styling.

I favor RTF, myself.

html++, forces you to keep things simple anyways, which is helpful when considering that you have to write simply for the end-user.

I have no problem with making OS 9 users use Appleworks or even Word to view the read me except that neither of these are part of OS 9. Yes, OS 9 is a minority, but it's not fair if they can't even view the read me.

And yes there are issues and risks with this method but I think we can iron them all out. We can provide instructions for developer's for each platform and links to free software they can use. I think it is the developer's duty to make sure they do this right to the best of their ability.

It seemed to me that AppleWorks was bundled on all OS9 computers, but I may be wrong. I tried to search Apple's knowledge base but could not come up with evidence one way or another. If some OS9 people can't even open the ReadMe it's indeed worrying.