Importing Greek Text as User Tool

[Davki]

Dear Forum members,

 

I encountered a (seemingly) strange problem when importing a Greek .htm file into Accordance, as a User Tool. I set the font of the text to Arial MS Unicode. Now, what happens is that the text imports fine, with some spaces missing etc. only the letter pi in the main text and the omega in the header show up as little squares rather than the respective letters.. I've tried to edit the text and I got a warning "cannot exceed 2000000 characters", maybe that's related? If anyone could shed some light on this I'd be very grateful.

 

P.S. I hope I posted this in the correct forum subsection.

[mikes]

The likely issue is the html source: while it may render as "greek" on your screen, there a number of ways it could be using to show you that greek.

 

The missing spaces are a function of the way Accordance imports html: you need to use a tool (like the free "Text Wrangler") to make sure that spaces are physically added instead of depending on line breaks within a <p> tag.

 

If it's not copyrighted, you might want to share the html file, or at least a portion of it.

 

In the mean time, try the following:

 

--> Cut and past from a web browser into an existing, empty user tool that has some of the improperly rendered text

Does that "work" ok when saved?

 

I'm not sure why you're getting the character limitation, check out this help page on display limits in the edit window on how to set preferences:

file:///Applications/Accordance.app/Contents/Resources/Accordance%20Help/content/topics/05_dd/display_limits_in_user-tool.htm

(this will only work if you have the latest version of Accordance installed)

[mikes]

It actually appears that there's a bug in the current version of Accordance (9.3.1) that fails to convert unicode (i.e. UTF-8 encoded text) to the proper fonts internal to Accordance.

 

The only viable workarounds that I can identify:

1. Downgrade by renaming accordance 9.3.1 and installing from a link that Accordance Support can provide you

2. Copy and Paste from your web browser into an empty user tool edit window in pieces

 

If you have small, short documents, or clear breaks you'll want to set titles to in smaller chunks, #2 is viable.

 

If you have a large complex document with html encoding you want to use to organize the content (for the browser), then you need to call support for an older version of Accordance or wait for the fix (I'm guessing 1-3 months).

[Joel Brown]

1-3 months? We hope to have it fixed for 9.3.2 in a week or less! But, if you can reencode the file (Not reinterpret!) as MacRoman, it should import correctly.

[mikes]

1-3 months? We hope to have it fixed for 9.3.2 in a week or less! But, if you can reencode the file (Not reinterpret!) as MacRoman, it should import correctly.

That would be fantastic!

 

Really not possible to reencode the greek to macroman (those romans apparently weren't big fans of the greeks!) See the attached images from attempting to do just that with Text Wrangler (similar reaction from TextMate).

[Davki]

2. Copy and Paste from your web browser into an empty user tool edit window in pieces

 

Dear mikes,

 

thank you so much. Tip #2 worked. The User Tool I had tried to create was based on this text of Epiphanius' Panarion: http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/panariog.htm. I don't think it's copyrighted.

As I had written, I first imported the entire text (copy&paste) into Word, formatted it as Arial MS Unicode and saved it as .htm. No idea why it didn't work. But anyway, pasting into an existing empty User Tool works fine. Still, I hope the 2000000 bug gets fixed soon.

 

Thanks again!