Stripping Out Extra Return Characters from DOS Text Files

[Chuck Hastings <cwh2@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Esteemed FrameMaker Sages,

When not doing technical writing with FrameMaker
to earn my keep, I'm sometimes writing novels.  I've
published one, FUBAR, through Xlibris Corporation
of Philadelphia, a Print-on-Demand house affiliated
with Random House.

For years I've used an oldie-but-goodie DOS-based
authoring tool, PCWrite, to write fiction.  PCWrite
is fast, user-friendly, robust, and productive, and has
the best spellchecker which I've ever used.  I can
port PCWrite text into FrameMaker  (or, ugh, into
MSWord)  easily enough, by using the Netscape
Messenger email text editor.  That's not my problem.

But there is just one little ornery gotcha:  PCWrite puts
a Return character at the end of every line of text.  There is
a way to deal with these extra Return characters using MSWord;
but I'd rather avoid using MSWord, because it's unstable and
does unwanted things to my text whenever I'm not looking.
However, I haven't yet figured out a way to make FrameMaker
strip all of these extra Return characters out, except by doing
so manually  (which is tedious, bigtime).

The basic automatic-software logic is to search for single
Return characters, and delete those.  Double Return
characters  (corresponding to real end-of-paragraph marks
in PCWrite)  are then replaced with some totally-funky
character which presumably will never arise otherwise
for any legitimate reason;  ¥  (ALT 157)  might for
instance be a satisfactory choice.  Then the final step
is to replace all the ¥s with single Return charadcters.

Now for the sticky $64K question:  How can I make
FrameMaker detect those extra Return Characters
in text?

I've experimented with Edit --> Find, but haven't found
the right gambit yet.  FrameMaker just tells me that
I need to have put some text into the Find dialogue box,
and ignores the Return character which I actually did
put in there using copy-and-paste.

What obvious common-sense strategy am I missing?

Thanks in advance for your wise, helpful suggestions.


Chuck Hastings      cwh2@earthlink.net




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