small caps corruption problem

[voyager]

This only happens in one document so I doubt it¹s widespread, but if
anyone has an explanation or fix (as opposed to saving as a web page
and hopefully avoiding the problem altogether), I¹d like to hear it, if
only for informational purposes.

I am using Word 2004 with OSX 10.3.8 (but this has been going on for a
few OSX revs). I am using a commercial font (LT Univers). I have a
listing of events in a table (5 columns, 12 rows). Some of the words in
each cell are formatted using small caps. Some, but _not all_, of the
full caps at the beginning of these words switch to a different letter.

For example, Corruption becomes Gorruption (the whole word is
small-capped). But Conception becomes Ronception, so it¹s not a
straight substitution for ³C². Clarification doesn¹t change at all. And
Extraction becomes Axtraction, so it¹s more than one letter.
(Nourishment becomes Aourishment, Imperative becomes Tmperative.) In
the same cell, I can have Cegeneration and Reviving, so the problem is
not consistent within the cell!

I have saved the doc as RTF and rebuilt the doc, but the problem
recurs. I have copied everything except the final paragraph marker, but
the problem recurs. I have trashed the Office font cache. I have
trashed all the Mac font caches. It recurs.

I have examined the text in a text editor, and the text itself is
correct.

Ideas?

TIA

 

[Elliott Roper]

This only happens in one document so I doubt it¹s widespread, but if
anyone has an explanation or fix (as opposed to saving as a web page
and hopefully avoiding the problem altogether), I¹d like to hear it, if
only for informational purposes.

I am using Word 2004 with OSX 10.3.8 (but this has been going on for a
few OSX revs). I am using a commercial font (LT Univers). I have a
listing of events in a table (5 columns, 12 rows). Some of the words in
each cell are formatted using small caps. Some, but _not all_, of the
full caps at the beginning of these words switch to a different letter.

For example, Corruption becomes Gorruption (the whole word is
small-capped). But Conception becomes Ronception, so it¹s not a
straight substitution for ³C². Clarification doesn¹t change at all. And
Extraction becomes Axtraction, so it¹s more than one letter.
(Nourishment becomes Aourishment, Imperative becomes Tmperative.) In
the same cell, I can have Cegeneration and Reviving, so the problem is
not consistent within the cell!

I have saved the doc as RTF and rebuilt the doc, but the problem
recurs. I have copied everything except the final paragraph marker, but
the problem recurs. I have trashed the Office font cache. I have
trashed all the Mac font caches. It recurs.

I have examined the text in a text editor, and the text itself is
correct.

What happens when you use a different font?
What happens when the same text is not in a table?
Is the corrupted character the first character in the paragraph?
Does the same thing happen with Univers LT in say TextEdit.

A very fine case of Gorruption. (sorry, couldn't resist)

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Voyager,

It's possible that the table, rather than the whole document, is corrupt.
Try this: With your cursor inside the table somewhere, go to Table>
Convert> Convert Table to Text. Immediately, without moving the cursor, go
to Table> Convert> Convert Text to Table. Any help?

If not, what happens if you change the font?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[voyager]

What happens when you use a different font?

It appears correctly.

But I¹ve used Univers in many tables over the years and this never
happened before, so I doubt that Univers is the culprit. (And see your
4th query below.)

What happens when the same text is not in a table?

Following Beth Rosengard¹s advice: Table to Text makes it appear
correctly. Text to table screws it up again.

Is the corrupted character the first character in the paragraph?
No

Does the same thing happen with Univers LT in say TextEdit.
No.

A very fine case of Gorruption. (sorry, couldn't resist)

So...it could be a corrupt table, which I¹ve never heard of before.
OTOH, I copied all but the last WORD from a cell, so I could be certain
not to accidentally copy any info at the end of the cell - created a
new document with a new table, pasted the text in a new cell - and
things were still wrong.

I should add that I have all the Office upgrades installed. I played
with the idea that Word or Office is corrupt, but then this wouldn¹t
happen in only one document.

It is an intellectual puzzle for me - I can find ways to work around
it. But it¹s an intriguing puzzle...

 

[voyager]

Hi Voyager,

It's possible that the table, rather than the whole document, is corrupt.
Try this: With your cursor inside the table somewhere, go to Table>
Convert> Convert Table to Text. Immediately, without moving the cursor, go
to Table> Convert> Convert Text to Table. Any help?

If not, what happens if you change the font?

Hi Beth -

Table to Text makes it appear correctly. Text to Table screws it up
again.

Changing the font fixes the problem, apparently. But I have used
Univers in many tables over the years and this is the only time the
corruption has occurred.

Also, I copied all but the last word of a corrupt cell (so as not to
run any risk of getting extra info at the end of the cell), created a
new doc, created a new table, pasted...and got the same corruption. So
it doesn¹t SEEM to be in the specific table. It does SEEM to have
something to do with the font, but I really don¹t believe the font is
corrupt. So...?

It¹s an intriguing puzzle, and I do appreciate your (and everyone¹s)
help.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Voyager,

My best guess? The font IS the problem.

Is Univers a free font? If so, delete the old Univers, download the new one
and install it. If not, maybe you have a friend or colleague who will send
it to you? I don't have it myself or I'd do it.

I don't know what else to suggest but maybe Elliott will have another idea.
Please keep us posted though; I want to know what the eventual solution is
.

And, by the way, not only can a table become corrupt, a graphic or any other
such element can as well.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hi Voyager,

My best guess? The font IS the problem.

Is Univers a free font? If so, delete the old Univers, download the new one
and install it. If not, maybe you have a friend or colleague who will send
it to you? I don't have it myself or I'd do it.

I don't know what else to suggest but maybe Elliott will have another idea.
Please keep us posted though; I want to know what the eventual solution is
.

And, by the way, not only can a table become corrupt, a graphic or any other
such element can as well.

It is pure F****** magic. Clearly an interaction between font and
table. I like your idea of getting a new version of the font.
I'm toying with the idea that there is some kind of mess in the way
that particular font handles Unicode.

Voyager, it is an interesting problem. I'd be interested in looking at
it with v.X, which is not Unicode savvy. If you would care to zip a
demonstration of the problem with a copy of the font and mail it to me,
I'd be happy to look at it. I have a bunch of Univers fonts, but not
that exact one. The cryptic instruction in my sig says you can
construct my email address by replacing nospam with elliott. It is a
kind of in-joke for people with antique computer knowledge. Pure
affectation I know ;-)

 

[voyager]

Is Univers a free font? If so, delete the old Univers, download the new one

Thanks, Beth.

Univers is not a free font - it¹s commercial, by Linotype. I¹ll
reinstall it and see what happens (hoping my uninstalled original file
is not already corrupted).

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

The cryptic instruction in my sig says you can
construct my email address by replacing nospam with elliott. It is a
kind of in-joke for people with antique computer knowledge. Pure
affectation I know ;-)

mung? You mean "munge"?

What's with the hex stuff? Many of those hex numbers have no Unicode
character, so it's not that. I can't see it's worth the bother of converting
them to decimal integers - what good would that do?

And why (and when) did you think you would be the last person to munge your
email address? Poor self-knowledge or some other reason? You've been saying
so for quite some time now... ;-)

 

[Clive Huggan]

mung? You mean "munge"?

What's with the hex stuff? Many of those hex numbers have no Unicode
character, so it's not that. I can't see it's worth the bother of converting
them to decimal integers - what good would that do?

And why (and when) did you think you would be the last person to munge your
email address? Poor self-knowledge or some other reason? You've been saying
so for quite some time now... ;-)

Be gentle with each other, chaps. Given your profound, shared appreciation
of the product of Australian vines, 'twould be a pity otherwise... ;-)

Clive H.
========

 

[Elliott Roper]

On 3/25/05 6:54 PM, in article 260320050254263057%[email protected], "Elliott



mung? You mean "munge"?

mung is a legit command in TECO, an archaic text editor and text
processing language. Invoking TECO with MUNG causes it to execute the
contents of its filename argument as teco commands. It stands for "Mung
Until No Good" fs is a teco string replace command, so mung was a hint
for the inner cabal to use teco to recover my e-mail address.

see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mung
and
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/M/mung.html
This reference unaccountably omits teco, even though some of the
original members of TMRC were teco's authors.

What's with the hex stuff? Many of those hex numbers have no Unicode
character, so it's not that. I can't see it's worth the bother of converting
them to decimal integers - what good would that do?

That's a PGP fingerprint. You put it about to enable a successful
challenge to an indentity thief in the land of Pretty Good Privacy.
Until the black helicopters arrive, only I can sign a message that can
be verified with the public key that carries that fingerprint.

And why (and when) did you think you would be the last person to munge your
email address? Poor self-knowledge or some other reason? You've been saying
so for quite some time now... ;-)

Originally it started with "SWEN has got to me" That was the horrible
virus that harvested e-mail addresses from news postings. At its peak,
I was getting 1000's of spam mails per hour. I found that SWEN ignored
addresses containing "nospam". Until SWEN, I thought it was polite to
be easily reachable by mail, without the sender having to play
crossword puzzles with the published return address.

You have convinced me it is all a bit precious. Revised sig follows:

PS. Thanks to you, I spent a good hour and a half pottering once again
in the Jargon File. It is a delightful piss take of academic literary
documents. Highly recommended.
The glossary starts here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/go01.html

PPS
Happy Easter to everyone in this group. It is one of the nicest,
politest and most helpful on all of usenet.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

mung is a legit command in TECO, an archaic text editor and text
processing language. Invoking TECO with MUNG causes it to execute the
contents of its filename argument as teco commands. It stands for "Mung
Until No Good" fs is a teco string replace command, so mung was a hint
for the inner cabal to use teco to recover my e-mail address.

Thanks for the explanation. That really is obscure! Mind you there seems
something a bit circular in deriving "mung" from "mung until no good". (I
don't accept the claim of "recursive acronyms" in the first reference below:
it's OK when the acronym has another, normal meaning, such as "Visa", used
within the acronym, but a bit pointless when the word has no other meaning
than the one you've just given it by acronym. It has to mean something
first.) The "backronym" explanation of "mash until no good" is more
satisfying, but sounds a bit specious. It sounds as if it was just used
first (maybe from "Munge" or that past participle of "mingle", and then the
explanations came later.

see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mung
and
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/M/mung.html
This reference unaccountably omits teco, even though some of the
original members of TMRC were teco's authors.
That's a PGP fingerprint. You put it about to enable a successful
challenge to an indentity thief in the land of Pretty Good Privacy.
Until the black helicopters arrive, only I can sign a message that can
be verified with the public key that carries that fingerprint.

Hmmm. This would be where you'd encrypt your message and only people who had
the private key to go with that public key could read it? Or something like
that? Probably I need to read up on this. Is it useful for news messages on
public news servers?

Sorry that sounds rather inflammatory - I guess I didn't throw in enough
smileys. Clive seems to think I was being aggressive here - probably others
did too. You, however, appear to have seen what was "getting to me" in a
very minor sort of way:

Originally it started with "SWEN has got to me" That was the horrible
virus that harvested e-mail addresses from news postings. At its peak,
I was getting 1000's of spam mails per hour. I found that SWEN ignored
addresses containing "nospam". Until SWEN, I thought it was polite to
be easily reachable by mail, without the sender having to play
crossword puzzles with the published return address.

I remember that sig of yours all too well... ;-) ;-) ;-)

You have convinced me it is all a bit precious.

Well, I might be the only one who thought so. But that was very perceptive
of you to work through all my flim-flamery [sic] to the pea under the
mattress. Really.

Revised sig follows:

PS. Thanks to you, I spent a good hour and a half pottering once again
in the Jargon File. It is a delightful piss take of academic literary
documents. Highly recommended.
The glossary starts here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/go01.html

Thanks for the reference.

PPS
Happy Easter to everyone in this group. It is one of the nicest,
politest and most helpful on all of usenet.

So it is. (And subtle point taken.)

Very nice. Clear. Certainly now that I (sort of) know what "teco" refers to.
And if I ever think that someone else is pretending to be you, I'll check
against this fingerprint. But couldn't they copy that too? ;-) I guess I
really need to read up on PGP...

 

[Elliott Roper]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hmmm. This would be where you'd encrypt your message and only
people who had the private key to go with that public key could
read it? Or something like that? Probably I need to read up on
this. Is it useful for news messages on public news servers?

Encryption would be pointless on a newsgroup, but signing might be
slightly less so.
If I thought somebody was impersonating me, I could start signing my
posts. Then those with PGP could tell which were from the imposter
(or me pretending to be the imposter ;-) ) In principle I could not
deny sending the signed posts without admitting that I had been
careless with my private key. I'll try signing this one.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 8.1

iQA/AwUBQkWYW35cqeSOWeJIEQJdUgCfcsSS3m5fFUzoRxOroDh3fBREfrsAn0jc
6fK8P4XKTYl0NZEOFbfTUJLv
=co0g
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Very nice. Clear.

I think so too .

And, Paul, for once <eg> I didn't think you were being too inflammatory;
even the single smiley (in the original message) made the point.

Cheers,

Beth

 

[Clive Huggan]

I think so too .

And, Paul, for once <eg> I didn't think you were being too inflammatory;
even the single smiley (in the original message) made the point.

Cheers,

Beth

Ditto here, too -- I just thought it was a rare, exquisite opportunity to
gently stir the pot when two of our most resourceful gurus were engaged in
an esoteric subject! ;-) ;-) ;-)

Clive
=====