Re: Plain text ASCII. Boston City Hall.

[Tim McNamara]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@nestle.csail.mit.edu> writes:

> a. How might I set up a free public service with the public notices
> of
>    Boston City Council Committees Public Hearings that the council
>    distributes merely by email in microsoft word format ?...
>
>    Ironically, the council has been unwilling to see how to
>    distribute public notices in plain text ascii

The simplest solutions- e.g., saving the documents as ASCII text
files or .rft files- is often the most difficult to see.  If they
really want to preserve a specific formatting, they should publish
them as PDF files.

> b. Would there be something like a list server that would
>    automatically convert forwarded public notices in microsoft word
>    format and make them readable on the web?...
>
>    I get the microsoft word formatted notices in rmail in emacs and
>    could forward them regularly, if necessary. It is the converting
>    to plain text ascii that is the difficulty.

Easy if you're running a Unix compatible OS.  There are several
small, compact applications that will convert between formats
(usually called something like "word2text" "word2rft" "word2pdf"
etc.  These are usually freeware and very robust.  Mac OS X will run
these, as well, from the command line (there are some drag-and-drop
versions for OS X).  If you're running Windows, I have *no* idea.  I
don't understand Windows, having been a Mac/Mac OS X/NetBSD user.

> c. Or would there be another way for me to forward the microsoft
>    word formatted notices to a web link where anyone would be able to
>    check the current and archived notices?...

You could certainly just archive the Word documents on a Web site and
people could download them at will.