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Charles McGrew <ChuckMcGrew@email.msn.com> wrote:

: The production is pretty easy. If you want to post it on the web, Word will
: convert your docs to HTML for you then you can just post it. Pretty simple,
: painless and cheap.

And incorrect.  For example, there's this thing in ASCII called a
quote mark (").  It's pretty simple, and it's been around for ages.
And for some dumbass reason, Word doesn't use it when it exports
to HTML.  Instead it uses some made-up character of its own that
only renders correctly if your machine is set up the way Microsoft
wants.  On other systems (that are actually adhering to the standard
character mapping tables) recognize this as an invalid gibberish
code and display a question mark instead.  There's a few other
examples of moronic behavior when it comes to characters in Word's
version of (non)HTML.  It's a shame, too, because other than the
screwed up characters, Word-generated HTML is usually fairly portable
to non-MS browsers.  That's why the "de-moronifier" program is so
handy.  It fixes up the few mistakes in Word HTML without ruining
the formatting of the document at all.