Re-installing FM 8 onto a new drive ...

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:22:26 -0700, <Syed.Hosain at aeris.net> wrote:

>Curiosity question: I see a number of people keeping FM7.2 on their
>systems. Why? Wouldn't it be simpler to go to FM8 and be done with it? I
>don't have a need to send .fm or .book files to people, but if I did, I
>could save it in FM7.2 format if needed (as far as I recall) from within
>FM 8.

Not always true.  While FM8 does offer FM7 (and FM7 MIF) as SaveAs
choices, there are a few spots where the FM8 UTF-8 encoding still
appears in the FM7 file.  Numbering strings, for example, when you
use a \b bullet in the string.  As a result, in Mif2Go, we check
FM7 files as well as FM8 files for UTF-8, and handle it correctly
wherever it appears.  But FM7 itself doesn't like UTF-8 at all...  ;-)

So we'd be wary of using FM8 in a mixed environment for files that 
will be worked on later by folks who have only FM7.  If you do use
it, test *very* thoroughly, and look in odd corners like variable
definitions, xref formats, and those numbering strings.  You may
be fine, but it's best to find out early if you're not.

HTH!

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/