Bobcaygeon Promoter, April 4, 2002
NetScoop: Further Freebies
by Anne Panter
A couple of weeks ago I was helping a friend set up her new computer on the internet. Within minutes of sending out her first email she received three in return, from her son in Korea. Two had attachments: an article he had written for the local newspaper, and a picture drawn by her 5-year-old granddaughter. You can imagine her disappointment when we were unable to open either file. Both were created in proprietary programs which she didn't have on her computer.
In my last column I described two of my four favourite freebies. The remaining ones, EditPad and Irfanview, can help solve this problem of software incompatability.
Irfanview (www.irfanview.de) is an image viewer which can open and convert many different file types (including the granddaughter's art work). There are only two kinds of images which are "safe" to send over the internet: .jpg and .gif ; these can be read by any computer. If you have a picture you want to share, and it's in a different format (file type), open it in Irfanview then "Save As" either .gif or .jpg , and send that version instead. If someone sends you a picture in any other format, you can probably view it with Irfanview.
Irfanview can also be used to change images, for instance to reduce them to a size which will fit onto your monitor. Again, do that before you send the photo. Also, check the file size (under Image / Information / Disk Size). If it's larger than 100K, reduce it further, or ask the person's permission before sending it
The newspaper article posed a different problem. I haven't yet found a good conversion program for different word processor formats. If anyone knows of one, please send me an email!. We emailed her son back, and asked him to copy-and-paste the article into Notepad, and send it to his mom as a text file.
Notepad is included in the "Accessories" on every Windows system. It seems very bare-bones: it won't let you choose fonts, add bold or italics, or even justify the text. That's not entirely because Microsoft is being cheap; Notepad is a text editor, so can only write plain text files. That's a good thing. An ancient computer custom called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) defines text characters which can be read by any computer. The list is pretty simple: you can use just about anything on the keyboard. What you can't do is add formatting. There is no ascii definition for bold, italic, underline or centre. These are all word processing functions, and as soon as you cross into word processing, you enter the world of proprietary software - and incompatability.
While the files Notepad creates must be "bare bones", there's no need for the program itself to be the same. Microsoft has omitted even the most basic features. For instance, it will open only one file at a time, there is no Search / Replace facility, you can't even choose a font when you print.
Because Notepad is so un-handy, a lot of people have written "Notepad replacement" programs. My favourite is Editpad. It lets me open multiple documents, search and replace within one file or across all the open files, choose fonts for viewing and printing, add header and footer information. All this and more, in a tiny (300k) program .Editpad is available at www.editpadpro.com/editpadclassic.html. After you install it, you can make it your default text editor (under Options/ Configure) and never see Notepad again!
EditPad was originally written as postcard ware... meaning it's free, but the author would a appreciate a postcard. So, make your mother proud and write a thank-you note.
For more information on this, or any other internet topic, come to the next meeting of the Kawartha Internet Users' Group. We meet on the 2nd Thursday of each month, 7pm, at the Lions' Hall, Main St., Bobcaygeon.
apanter@kawartha.net
Return to Kawartha Internet Users' Group
Panters' home page
Bobcaygeon