The EasiWriter / TechWriter Family - Importing and Exporting

From version 4.10 onwards TW/EW Pro have extended capability to import and export word documents and html wepages with a range of graphics and links. For more detailed information use the following links.

From version 5.00 onwards, TW/EW Pro have the ability to import DDF files (text with styles, etc) from !Impression. Versions 6.00 and 7.00 onwards have further extended the file import an export capabilities. Pre ‘Pro’ versions are now also regarded as ‘obsolete’. For that reason they have now been omitted from the following tables. !Writer is a newer member of the family and has been bundled with some machines/upgrades. !Writer is suitable for basic wordprocessing and file exchange, but anyone who finds it useful is likely to want to purchase an upgrade to get the superior facilities of the ‘full’ members of the family as these boast significant extra capabilities – e.g. the ability to import and export a wide variety of Word documents, etc.

The main capabilities of the EW/TW/Writer family are indicated on the following tables. Note that this should be regarded as just a summary. More detailed infomation on the main facilities is available on other pages.

Exporting data from the EW/TW Family.

In addition to being able to save EasiWriter/TechWriter documents and stationery files, data can be saved in the following forms:



Word 6/7
TeX
HTML
Area as DrawFile
Tab sep. files
Postscript
Index and Contents
Selected area
Text
Text (selected)
RTF
Java Applets
Animations

The ability to save selected areas as drawfiles is particularly useful in enabling output to be delivered to other RiscOS applications. For example it permits complex equations from TW/TWPro to be saved and then displayed in other apps or converted by a suitable graphics package (e.g. InterGIF or Compo) into GIFs for display on webpages.

When saving ASCII text it is possible to control the output format - e.g. choose how lines or paragraphs are terminated and format to a specific number of characters per line. These facilities also apply to some other exported formats – e.g. HTML.

Importing data into the EW/TW Family.

In addition to being able to load its own file types, the following file formats can be imported:



Text
Sprites, DrawFiles, etc
CSV (converts to table)
Word 6/7/8/9 †
RTF
HTML
HTML Table Improvements
!Impression DDF *
1st Word Plus
Java Applets
Animations

Sprites, DrawFiles, and JPEGs can be imported and displayed using the standard RiscOS facilities.

The TW/EW family co-operate with ImageFS2. Provided ImageFS2 is operating, a much wider range of 'alien' file formats (including WMF vector files) can be displayed and imported. These can either be loaded directly or embedded in Word documents. This makes the Pro versions especially useful for exchanging and editing documents with other platforms.

Many webpages use complex and/or large arrangements of tables to try and force a specific layout on what you will see when browsing the pages. This bad practice has also tended to grow as a lazy habit amongst some users of ‘Word’. The results are, structurally, a bit of a dog’s dinner as tables are really meant for, erm, well, tables. The Pro Plus versions of EasiWriter and TechWriter have had their table handling improved to try and cope with the excessive use of tables that is found in some HTML and Word files. In particular, this means better results for tables that are long enough to extend over many pages.

^* DDF files can be imported into TW/EW Pro, version 5.00 onwards. This means text with styles, emphases, etc, can be transferred from !Impression to TW/EW Pro.

† The ability to import Word 8 (Office 97/98) and Word 9 (Office 2000) documents was introduced with version 4.10 of EasiWriter Pro and TechWriter Pro. Hence if you are using a version prior to these you will require an upgrade.

Click here for more detailed information of what the EW/TW family can do.

Back to the main TechWriter Tips page for more info...

Content and pages maintained by: Jim Lesurf (jcgl@st-and.demon.co.uk)