AFT -- Almost free text.

AFT -- Almost free text.

[Gil Andre]

Hi!

Following the different threads here about word/excel file
conversions, I thought : "That's all fine and dandy, but
what about the reverse: Linux to word/excel?".

As everyone knows, to "create" an Excel file, you can just
type your "spreadsheet" as a .CSV file, that Excel is then
able to open.

But what about Word? Well, "aft" is a small utility that
can convert a very simple ASCII file into .RTF if need be.
The same command-line program also offers ascii to HTML
and ascii to LaTEX conversion.

This seems to be the most simple program I have found so
far, and I do intend to use it extensively and post the 
results on this list (and somewhere on the net as well).

Official site for aft is:
http://www.maplefish.com/todd/aft.html

Hopefully, this will be helpful for other people on this
list.

/----------------------------------------------------\
| Gil Andre -- Technical Writer -- gandre@arkeia.com |
|        Knox Software: http://www.arkeia.com        |
|A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.|
\----------------------------------------------------/

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Gil Andre on January 11, 2002, at 11:29]

>But what about Word? Well, "aft" is a small utility that
>can convert a very simple ASCII file into .RTF if need be.

Here's my stupid question for the day. Why would one need to do that? Why not
just give the person who's insisting on using Word the plain old ASCII file and
let him tell Word to read it in? Surely Word can read in a plain old ASCII text
file, can't it?

Now, LaTeX to Word, via a route which wouldn't lose any of the mark-up, would
be useful.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Gil Andre]

Good question.

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 07:09:06 -0500 (EST)
Dave Mielke <dave@mielke.cc> wrote:
> 
> Here's my stupid question for the day. Why would one need to do that? Why not
> just give the person who's insisting on using Word the plain old ASCII file and
> let him tell Word to read it in? Surely Word can read in a plain old ASCII text
> file, can't it?

Why? Because .RTF or HTML files can be a little bit more
pleasant to read -- such a file can have basic bold,
underlined, and alignement (left/right/centered-aligned
text) functions.

Because, whether you like it or not (and whether you use it
or not) some people require a minimum of text formatting in
the documents you send them. Some may even require you to
insert a proper company logo & header, a standardized footer,
disclaimer, etc, which are simply impossible to render in
straight ASCII.

Because these users may need to print your document and show
them to someone else. Plain vanilla ASCII does not make very
good printable, professional-looking versions...

Because you may need to generate files for both sighted and
non-sighted users. With aft, I think I have found one of the
best solution for this: enter everything in an ASCII file,
convert to HTML or straight ASCII for non-sighted users and 
to RTF or HTML for sighted users. One or two commands and I
am done.

Because a badly-formatted ASCII file can be a pain in the neck
to read on a screen. You should think "staircase effect" here:
two words on one line, then two words on another line (slightly
to the right of the first line), then two other words on a third
line (again slightly more to the right than the 2nd) and so on and
so forth... This drives crazy any user, sighted or not, and it's
a very very common problem with ASCII files that are moved from
one system to another, slightly different, computer. ASCII CR,
and LF characters are used differently and produce different
results whether your computer is running DOS/Windows, Linux, or
MacOS.

Because, frankly, I don't trust MS-Word to do anything properly.
And MS-Word may or may not properly read ASCII files created on
a Linux/Unix machine. And because it's only a matter of time
before MS tries to entirely shut out Linux users -- you can bet
that Redmond will try, sooner or later, to play some dirty tricks
on Linux-generated files... even if they are ASCII. Remember:
Microsoft is not in software for the good of its users. It is
publishing software to make mucho $$$.

Because straight-ASCII may not be sufficient for people who use
diacritical signs, which is 90% of the world outside of the
United States. Think, for instance, of Spanish/French/German
speakers, to name a few, who use acute, grave or umlaut accents
all the time. Accents in ASCII? No way, Jose! You just have to
use HTML or RTF for this. Trivial question? I don't think so.
In some languages (French, for instance) one accent can make a
whole lot of difference in the final meaning of a sentence...

Finally, because this is a problem I run in all the time! Is that
enough reason for you? <g>

I know some of the functions I described may not concern too many
people out there -- but for those who are concerned, like me, such
a utility is simply invaluable. I am a Technical Writer, and I have
to work with several vision-handicapped and non-handicapped users.
I can't afford to shut out one part of my users to please the other.
(See above).

> Now, LaTeX to Word, via a route which wouldn't lose any of the
> mark-up, would be useful.

I think you probably need to have a look at this page, then:
http://tug.org/utilities/texconv/textopc.html

Hope this helps! <g>

Take care!

/----------------------------------------------------\
| Gil Andre -- Technical Writer -- gandre@arkeia.com |
|        Knox Software: http://www.arkeia.com        |
|A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.|
\----------------------------------------------------/

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Gil Andre on January 11, 2002, at 14:32]

>Why? Because .RTF or HTML files can be a little bit more
>pleasant to read --

And many, many other reasons.

That, of course, wasn't my question. My question was why a person would want to
have a Linux tool which converted simple text into Word. That's just not
useful.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Gil Andre]

Ahem.

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002 09:54:17 -0500 (EST)
Dave Mielke <dave@mielke.cc> wrote:

> [quoted lines by Gil Andre on January 11, 2002, at 14:32]
> 
> >Why? Because .RTF or HTML files can be a little bit more
> >pleasant to read --
> 
> And many, many other reasons.
> 
> That, of course, wasn't my question. My question was why a person would want to
> have a Linux tool which converted simple text into Word. That's just not
> useful.

I don't mean to appear too obnoxious, but have you read my
message? I gave you all the reasons why. RTF is a Microsoft
file format which is accepted by Word without any problems.

Again, I need to communicate with two kinds of users. Some
are blind, and will accept ASCII or HTML files, which are
easy to manage with the proper tools. Other users, who are
not blind, use Windows (or Linux) and request a minimum of
formatting in the files I send them. Having a tool that
allow me to communicate with both sets of users and post
the files on the www servers is a Real Good Thing.

It may sound weird to you, or useless... But I needed this
and I am happy I found a small program to do this. <g>

Take care!

/----------------------------------------------------\
| Gil Andre -- Technical Writer -- gandre@arkeia.com |
|        Knox Software: http://www.arkeia.com        |
|A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.|
\----------------------------------------------------/

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Gil Andre on January 11, 2002, at 16:17]

>I don't mean to appear too obnoxious, but have you read my
>message? I gave you all the reasons why.

Yes, and now I'm really intent on proving to everyone just how profundly stupid
I must be.

>RTF is a Microsoft
>file format which is accepted by Word without any problems.

That doesn't answer my question. A simple text file is no more than a simple
text file. It has very little inherrent formatting in it. Converting it to rtf,
html, or even all the way to Word, can't improve on that, so why does it need
to be done before handing it off to a Word user. What's wrong with giving the
Windows user the plain old text file and letting Word convert it from plain
text into its own format?

What am I missing? Perhaps Word can't read a plain text file. If that's so,
then I stand corrected? If it can, then why use something else to convert the
document for it?

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[ddunfee]

"But, what about Word?", someone asked.

use plain text and give it a .txt extension, word will be as happy as a
corperat lawyer at a ms convention.  If you use no eol markings etc. the
end user can pull it into a layout in word of their own design.  While we
are talking about it, comma delimited files can be imported into excel and
the access database with equal facility.  The name of the latter is always
ironic as it is the least accessible of the ms "products".  The reality is
that there are universal formats, ascii text and comma delimited data
files.  While I'm on my soapbox, I have always thought using these
universal formats is easily a reasonable accomidation under the ada, no one
need be forced to use windows in many situations.  Even many proprietary
applications used in offices are just front ends for windows based
databases and could easily use one of the universal formats which are
accessible in speech friendly operating systems and applications.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Charles McCathieNevile]

The value of a richer format (Word, for those who have Word, HTML, for those
who have a browser, etc) is that it can include more information. For
example, borwsers can extract the headings from an HTML page and present a
"page outline" (word does a similar thing, and did it first) that should give
a good guide to where the important parts are - a simple table of contents
with some idea of the relative importance. Or can skip over a list of items
easily. Or can extract a list of the links (many JAWS users navigate by this
technique, because they learn it early, although it isn't nearly as powerful
for reading documents as an outline view).

etc.

The worst case is that users still just get plain text. The best case is that
they get a lot more information, that was once only encoded by means of
fairly visually-oriented formatting conventions derived from paper, and have
tools that can do useful things with it.

cheers

Charles McCN

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Dave Mielke wrote:

  That doesn't answer my question. A simple text file is no more than a simple
  text file. It has very little inherrent formatting in it. Converting it to rtf,
  html, or even all the way to Word, can't improve on that, so why does it need
  to be done before handing it off to a Word user. What's wrong with giving the
  Windows user the plain old text file and letting Word convert it from plain
  text into its own format?

  What am I missing? Perhaps Word can't read a plain text file. If that's so,
  then I stand corrected? If it can, then why use something else to convert the
  document for it?



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Charles McCathieNevile on January 11, 2002, at 11:37]

>The value of a richer format (Word, for those who have Word, HTML, for those
>who have a browser, etc) is that it can include more information. For
>example, borwsers can extract the headings from an HTML page and present a
>"page outline" (word does a similar thing, and did it first) that should give
>a good guide to where the important parts are -

I haven't disputed any of these things. I'm simply questioning the value of the
tool which began this thread, which, purportedly, just converts plain text into
Word format. What is its value, since Word can already read a plain text file?

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Luke Davis]

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Dave Mielke wrote:

> >Why? Because .RTF or HTML files can be a little bit more
> >pleasant to read --
>
> And many, many other reasons.
>
> That, of course, wasn't my question. My question was why a person would want to
> have a Linux tool which converted simple text into Word. That's just not
> useful.

The point is: converting ASCII into a .doc format, does nothing to change
the document.  It just makes the file format word native--it does nothing
to make the text "look better".

Luke

RE: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Luke Davis]

So: does this utility convert the text to fit within their margins?

Luke


On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Ian Blackburn wrote:

> yes! word can read plain text but a lot of word users don't know how to
> reformat the text to fit within their margins.  I play with plain text all
> the time but are not yet going well with linux but hay eventially!
>
>
>
> ========================================================
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> ========================================================
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>
>
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>

RE: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Ian Blackburn]

yes! word can read plain text but a lot of word users don't know how to
reformat the text to fit within their margins.  I play with plain text all
the time but are not yet going well with linux but hay eventially! 



========================================================
 Standard disclaimer:
 Any recipient of this communication acknowledges that:
 * the Government Employees Superannuation Board accepts no responsibility
 for the contents, nor the validity of this communication; and
 * they do not rely on any view given unless it is properly authorised. 
========================================================
 

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Charles McCathieNevile]

I don't know if Word is clever enough or not - I don't have a copy of it. But
for the few people who insist I give them something in Word format it would
be helpful to have a tool that produces real Word format, rather than just
imports the text.

I do use these tools for HTML regularly, and appreciate them.

cheers

Charles

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Dave Mielke wrote:

  [quoted lines by Charles McCathieNevile on January 11, 2002, at 12:42]

  >Aaah. The value of this tool (which I am imagining through my experience of a
  >tool called txt2html) is that it recognises common text formatting
  >conventions (which can vary from page to page) and converts them into markup
  >which is richer and more explicit. If it is a reasonably good tool, and
  >txt2html certainly is, so I imagine it will be, it is useful.

  I understand that, but am still perplexed. Isn't Word smart enough to do that
  for itself? I still don't understand the need to use a clever common format
  detecter to prepare the plain text file before it's passed on to the Word user.
  I'd understand if the original user intended to maintain the document in its
  new format from then on, but that, at least to me, didn't appear to be the
  case.



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Luke Davis]

Building converters is easy.  Geting the format specs is not.


On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Martin G. McCormick wrote:

> 	I will weigh in a bit on this topic.  Everybody else
> around me primarily uses Microsoft Windows and related products.
> This whole campus of roughly twenty-thousand students and another
> three-thousand give or take a few hundred staff members uses and
> sometimes barely uses Windows and products that run on Windows.
> We have a few Mac users and those of us who are FreeBSD and Linux
> users, but I feel great if I can just hand somebody a file and
> say, "Here.  This is what you needed."
>
> 	Information is what this game is all about and my hope is
> that Linux will make it easier for computer users who are blind
> to function along side everyone else.
>
> 	I send and receive ASCII files all the time and people
> use them, but just as we would rather get sound files we can
> play and text files we can read without doubling the cost of our
> work stations or going to a lot of various other forms of hassle,
> the general user community wants stuff they can use without a lot
> of trouble.
>
> 	Utilities that convert one format in to another should be
> our stock and trade since smart employers and instructors will
> not get nearly as hung up about whether or not we can do this or
> that job if we can simply make our system work with the existing
> infrastructure.
>
> 	I am not ranting at anybody or saying that anybody is
> wrong, only that I like it if I can take something I am
> comfortable using, feed it in to a filter or format converter and
> come out with some gibberish in standard output or sent to some
> file that the other guy is happy with.
>
> 	I don't know how many care, but this happens all the time
> when you make an international telephone call.
>
> 	The digital ISDN lines in Europe and many other countries
> use something called A-law encoding for audio.  It is a
> piece-wise handling of the logarithmic values which
> represent sound levels.
>
> 	In North America, our ISDN lines have a piece-wise
> logarithmic function which is slightly different.  It is called
> MU-Law encoding.  Audio encoded with one scheme sounds positively
> terrible if received on a telephone built for the other system so
> there are digital converters that substitute MU-Law for A-Law
> encoding as the audio flies back and forth across the pond.
>
> 	I believe that our /dev/audio device is set up to receive
> MU-Law signals, here, and you can set your /dev/audio in Europe
> for A-Law, but I may be dead wrong.  My point is that it is a
> neighborly thing to do if you can communicate with the rest of
> the world in a manner that works for all.
>
> 	We Linux users probably have more flexibility built in to
> the operating system than non-UNIX users so building converters
> should be a lot less painful for us.
>
> 	I am sorry if this sounds like a rant, but it is a
> positive rant if such a thing exists.
>
> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
> OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Ron Marriage on January 11, 2002, at 16:52]

>I often have to supply documents or reports to a group or
>committee of sighted people.

True.

>They expect these reports to
...

True.

>It's not that they wouldn't accept straight ascii text from
>me.  They would be happy to do so, they'd just assume that
>it was the best the blind guy could do.

True.

I understand everything you've said, but none of it addresses the issue since a
plain text to Word converter can't introduce, unassisted, any of that
professional stuff in any sort of meaningful way. You'd have to already be
maintaining your document in some higher level way, and, for those who read all
of what I originally wrote, I did say that a LaTeX to Word converter which
didn't lose any of the mark-up would indeed be useful. My contention still is
that a plain text to Word converter is entirely useless.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Ron Marriage]

I often have to supply documents or reports to a group or
committee of sighted people.
In almost all cases, I'm the computer guy and most of them
can reach the level of reading their email and either can't
or don't want to go further.

They expect these reports to carry a company logo at the
top, have a title centered and in a large font, the want
lists indented and like that little thingie in front of them
so they know it really is a list.  They want important stuff
in red or someother color.
They might want charts and they always want a summary or
index on the first page.

While ascii is my most used format, I am forced to use HTML
or some other formating technique so that they can see what
they want or expect.
It isn't that ascii isn't recognized by word, it's that I
want my documents to look professional, that I want them to
look like my boss or a committe of sighted members expect
them to be.

It's not that they wouldn't accept straight ascii text from
me.  They would be happy to do so, they'd just assume that
it was the best the blind guy could do.

Ron


Dave Mielke wrote:
> 
> [quoted lines by Charles McCathieNevile on January 11, 2002, at 12:42]
> 
> >Aaah. The value of this tool (which I am imagining through my experience of a
> >tool called txt2html) is that it recognises common text formatting
> >conventions (which can vary from page to page) and converts them into markup
> >which is richer and more explicit. If it is a reasonably good tool, and
> >txt2html certainly is, so I imagine it will be, it is useful.
> 
> I understand that, but am still perplexed. Isn't Word smart enough to do that
> for itself? I still don't understand the need to use a clever common format
> detecter to prepare the plain text file before it's passed on to the Word user.
> I'd understand if the original user intended to maintain the document in its
> new format from then on, but that, at least to me, didn't appear to be the
> case.
> 
> --
> Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
> Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
> EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list@redhat.com
> https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 
Ron Marriage
Homepage http://www.seidata.com/~marriage/
Email  mailto:marriage@seidata.com
Linux User Group http://www.seidata.com/~seilug/
Blind Links  http://www.seidata.com/~marriage/rblind.html

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Charles McCathieNevile on January 11, 2002, at 12:42]

>Aaah. The value of this tool (which I am imagining through my experience of a
>tool called txt2html) is that it recognises common text formatting
>conventions (which can vary from page to page) and converts them into markup
>which is richer and more explicit. If it is a reasonably good tool, and
>txt2html certainly is, so I imagine it will be, it is useful.

I understand that, but am still perplexed. Isn't Word smart enough to do that
for itself? I still don't understand the need to use a clever common format
detecter to prepare the plain text file before it's passed on to the Word user.
I'd understand if the original user intended to maintain the document in its
new format from then on, but that, at least to me, didn't appear to be the
case.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Charles McCathieNevile]

Aaah. The value of this tool (which I am imagining through my experience of a
tool called txt2html) is that it recognises common text formatting
conventions (which can vary from page to page) and converts them into markup
which is richer and more explicit. If it is a reasonably good tool, and
txt2html certainly is, so I imagine it will be, it is useful.

cheers

Chaals

On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Dave Mielke wrote:

  [quoted lines by Martin G. McCormick on January 11, 2002, at 10:39]

  >	I send and receive ASCII files all the time and people
  >use them, but just as we would rather get sound files we can
  >play and text files we can read without doubling the cost of our
  >work stations or going to a lot of various other forms of hassle,
  >the general user community wants stuff they can use without a lot
  >of trouble.

  But a Word user can already use a plain text file, so I'm still trying to
  understand what's so great about a tool which converts a plain text file, which
  already is Word-usable, into another format. Nothing is gained, which makes the
  tool entirely useless.



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative     http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France)

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Martin G. McCormick on January 11, 2002, at 10:39]

>	I send and receive ASCII files all the time and people
>use them, but just as we would rather get sound files we can
>play and text files we can read without doubling the cost of our
>work stations or going to a lot of various other forms of hassle,
>the general user community wants stuff they can use without a lot
>of trouble.

But a Word user can already use a plain text file, so I'm still trying to
understand what's so great about a tool which converts a plain text file, which
already is Word-usable, into another format. Nothing is gained, which makes the
tool entirely useless.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.

Re: AFT -- Almost free text.

[Martin G. McCormick]

	I will weigh in a bit on this topic.  Everybody else
around me primarily uses Microsoft Windows and related products.
This whole campus of roughly twenty-thousand students and another
three-thousand give or take a few hundred staff members uses and
sometimes barely uses Windows and products that run on Windows.
We have a few Mac users and those of us who are FreeBSD and Linux
users, but I feel great if I can just hand somebody a file and
say, "Here.  This is what you needed."

	Information is what this game is all about and my hope is
that Linux will make it easier for computer users who are blind
to function along side everyone else.

	I send and receive ASCII files all the time and people
use them, but just as we would rather get sound files we can
play and text files we can read without doubling the cost of our
work stations or going to a lot of various other forms of hassle,
the general user community wants stuff they can use without a lot
of trouble.

	Utilities that convert one format in to another should be
our stock and trade since smart employers and instructors will
not get nearly as hung up about whether or not we can do this or
that job if we can simply make our system work with the existing
infrastructure.

	I am not ranting at anybody or saying that anybody is
wrong, only that I like it if I can take something I am
comfortable using, feed it in to a filter or format converter and
come out with some gibberish in standard output or sent to some
file that the other guy is happy with.

	I don't know how many care, but this happens all the time
when you make an international telephone call.

	The digital ISDN lines in Europe and many other countries
use something called A-law encoding for audio.  It is a
piece-wise handling of the logarithmic values which
represent sound levels.

	In North America, our ISDN lines have a piece-wise
logarithmic function which is slightly different.  It is called
MU-Law encoding.  Audio encoded with one scheme sounds positively
terrible if received on a telephone built for the other system so
there are digital converters that substitute MU-Law for A-Law
encoding as the audio flies back and forth across the pond.

	I believe that our /dev/audio device is set up to receive
MU-Law signals, here, and you can set your /dev/audio in Europe
for A-Law, but I may be dead wrong.  My point is that it is a
neighborly thing to do if you can communicate with the rest of
the world in a manner that works for all.

	We Linux users probably have more flexibility built in to
the operating system than non-UNIX users so building converters
should be a lot less painful for us.

	I am sorry if this sounds like a rant, but it is a
positive rant if such a thing exists.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group