To convert a series of whole text files from one format to another, choose one or more of these options:
Activated : click this to tell the Converter you plan to convert text files.
Preserve file-dates: if checked, text files keep their previous existing date & time after re-saving.
safer: copy | copy unconverted too
Tip: if copying, check the copy the unconverted too box if you want to keep your whole corpus in one place. Any unconverted texts get copied to a sub-folder so you still know which ones were altered.
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Options
into Unicode (UTF16):
.... this is a better standard than ASCII or ANSI as it allows many more characters to be used, suiting lots of languages. See Flavours of Unicode.
This is a set of texts in Polish which the file-choose window discovered are in various formats.
Ensure you choose the right language for ANSI texts
The Unicode texts don't need converting, the UTF-8 texts are straightforward to convert automatically, but for the ANSI texts such as the last two above WordSmith needs to know which language they are based on. They will get converted in accordance with the currently selected language.
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TXT file extensions:
... makes the filename end in .txt (so that Notepad will open without hassling you; Windows was baffled by the empty filenames of the BNC editions prior to the XML edition). If you choose this you will be asked whether to force .txt onto all files regardless, or only ones which have no file extension at all.
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curly quotes etc.:
... changes any curly single or double quote marks or apostrophes into straight ones, ellipses into ..., and dashes into hyphens. (Microsoft's curly apostrophes differ from straight ones.) See also changing a whole set of unwanted characters.
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removing line-breaks
... replaces every end of line line-break with a space. Preserves any true paragraph breaks, which you must ensure are defined (default = <Enter><Enter> -- in other words two line-breaks one after the other with no words between them).
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See also: Mark-up, Word/Excel/PDF, non-Unicode, convert within text files, change unwanted characters, MS Word documents, Guide to handling the BNC
