MATTERS ARISING FROM THE MEETING ON 6th April
IJust for once, we managed to cover the scheduled topics and fihish on time!.
There's very little to say by way of an afterthought, but the thorny topic of plain text versus formatted text raised its head again.
To reiterate. A plain text file consists merely of the text to be displayed (or printed) with nothing in the way of formatting instructions. A formatted document file will not only define the text or other items to be displayed, but also, by way of coding, give the way in which it is to be displayed - font and size, margins, headers, footes, page numbers etc. The problem with such a file is that it must be decodable by any computer on which it is to be displayed, and, unlike plain text, there is no universal format. Therefore, before sending a formatted document to any recipients as an e-mail attachment, you must make sure the recipient(s) have software which will understand and correctly display your file. The nearest to a universally understood format is Rich Text, whose files have the extension *.rtf. Other common formats are *doc (Microsoft Word or Word Perfect) *.wri (Microsoft Write) or *.sxw (Star Office). Be particularly careful with *.doc files, as not only can these be either Microsoft Word or WordPerfect files, but different versions of Microsoft Word are incompatible with each other, and a file written using one version may not be readable on an older version.
Surgery and general gossip mornings are on the 13th and 27th April. The next formal meeting is on April 20th.
Finally, a reminder of my e-mail addresses:
billnot@billnot.com for general mail
questions@billnot.com for questions to be answered in the Grapevine or at a session.