latin-1 encoding on the mac

[Darrel Hoffman]

> hi darrel... my sentiments entirely!!!

>
> flash integration in director is an absolute joke, despite what mm may tell us. though to be fair, a lot of the problems are

related directly to flash... i've seen better performance from a Trabant! ;-)

>
> Anyway, problem is I can't use bitmaps, cos the XML is basically my database, so the text has to remain dynamic. And I want to use

XML cos there isn't sufficient data or queries to warrent a full blown database solution. XML is definately the way forward...

>
> And not sure what you mean about the fonts, cos at end of the day it's a pure text file i'm reading in and parsing... or a you

saying that the chars that get shot when being parsed will be displayed correctly again by the 'fake font'? Still I don't think
that's a solution cos the customer will want the same font as used as in other products.

>
> but are you saying it really won't work? i've been told in a german list that it will work, I just need to use the right encoding

/ parser combination (I'm using Andy White's XML Parser lingo)?

Yeah, about the fake font thing... It most likely will NOT correctly read data from an already existing latin-1 encoded document.
It's just an ordinary font which contains the characters of a non-Roman alphabet. It's really more of a workaround than anything
else, and it can be a real pain to work with. For example, a colleague of mine had to write a program that would correctly display
Hebrew text in Director. Since Director doesn't support Unicode, he was forced to use a pseudo-Hebrew font to do it (For the
record, I think it was called Ramah, or something like that.) However, as you may be aware, Hebrew is written from right-to-left,
not left-to-right as standard fonts work. So he had to type everything backwards. Granted, your situation wouldn't be QUITE that
bad, but your text will probably not import correctly using this method. Anyone who's ever tried using the Symbol font (generally
included with your OS) to do actual Greek text will attest to that. But unfortunately, that's really the only way right now, other
than converting to bitmaps, which you've already ruled out, and using Flash, which is a real headache to work with, especially if
you're trying to incorporate an external database. As I said before, voice your complaints to Macromedia. The more people that ask
for it, the greater the chance they'll be forced to finally incorporate it into a future version.

[Darrel Hoffman]

> What DirectorMX offered was a new, "MX oriented" interface that most seem to

> like, but I still prefer working with the old one, and OSX and Flash MX
> support.

There are only 2 new things in DirMX that I have any use for. The new split-pane message window, and the Object Inspector. Nothing
else is cool enough to be worth the upgrade price in my opinion...

[Gretchen Macdowall]

In article <bdi0si$r6m$1@forums.macromedia.com>, "rich in berlin"
[email]webforumsuser@macromedia.com[/email] wrote:

> to display german text, read from an external xml file, saved with

latin-1 text encoding. and i want to do this on both pc AND MAC...

>
> (and after buying the same software TWICE, just so's I can create Mac

projectors, i think thatt's fairly reasonable to expect?!!)

>
> so why can't director do this for me?!!!
> even a freeware webbrowser is capable of displaying latin-1 files on the

mac, so it's not a question of "can't do it"

>
> can somebody please tell me how i can do this?!!
>

One way to do it is to use TextCruncher's URLencode / decode which is
cross-mapped to work correctly cross platform. You could also build your
own crossmap filter with Lingo.

[url]http://www.updatestage.com/xtras/textcruncher.html[/url]

Gretchen Macdowall
[url]http://www.updatestage.com/[/url]