[Framers] Mif wash .book files

[Stamm, David]

2016-11-17-04T20:00Z

Steve -

Thanks for that peek into the arcana of ASCII files:  I learned something there.

To further the test, I opened the .mif file with SyncRO Soft <oXygen/> XML Editor, saved the file as a copy, and opened the copy with FrameMaker.  Then I used XML Editor to delete some cruft and to save the file.  FrameMaker opened the file just fine.

Given the mysterious (to me) performance of Notepad, here's what I think might have happened.  Somewhere in that perfectly-good .mif file, Notepad found a "0" and turned it sideways to try to be a "1."  If that wasn't enough, then Notepad laid the "1" on its side and tried to make it into an underscore.  FrameMaker easily detected the ruse and refused to recognize the corrupted file.

That's my story, and I plan to stick to it (until further notice in case I actually learn the cause of the problem).

Dave Stamm
Information Engineer

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Rickaby [mailto:srickaby at wordmongers.demon.co.uk] 
Sent: 2016-11-17-Thursday 14:33
To: Stamm, David-P45904; Robert Lauriston; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: [Framers] Mif wash .book files

At 19:14 +0000 17/11/16, Stamm, David wrote:

>You, too, have hit upon something.  Your test resulted in no joy again.  ¿So, what does Notepad do that corrupts the .mif file?

Wildly guessing here based on Mac experience.... A MIF file is an ASCII text file. So you have to think, what could go wrong with an ASCII text file?

. Variations in character encoding standards

. Non-compliance with the expected line end character/character combo (i.e. LF, CR, CR+LF and so on)

. Fniger troulbe when editing ;-)

and so on.

On Mac I never had any issues with MIF-washing, but saying that doesn't help you. I've now got a mixed-platform system and editors that can display invisible characters, so happy to run trials if that would help.
 
-- 
Steve