Same Old Question?

[Gabe]

Hey Guys, I'm new so please forgive my ignorance. I know that I have see this question before but cant seem to find it now. How do I save a file that I have created in Xara as a jpg instead of .xar? I have tried the file then export but when I open it in Word it just comes up as a lot of letters and symbols. I am creating some business logos that I want to use in MS Word and this is driving me nuts! Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.......Gabe

[mykyl1966]

File then export.

Cheers

Mike R

[Soquili]

Hi Gabe,

In Word use the Insert > Picture > From File menu to have the jpg file show as you expect. Using the Open menu does indeed result in letters and symbols as the binary data is being interpreted as ascii characters.

Your use of the File > Export menu in Xara is the correct way to "save" a copy of your drawing. Use the File > Save menu to save your xar file for editing at a later date.

[Gabe]

Thanks Soquili...........I dont know why I couldn't figure that one out. Don't I feel like the ignoramous. Love this forum btw. Such great information and very very nice people. Between here and XaraXone I feel like I could design anything with a little time and patience. Thanks again! Look forward to geting to know you all and submitting my first drawing.

[Soquili]

Gabe, we all have moments when simple things escape us. I think it is because they are simple. By the way, Welcome to the forums.

[tad]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh,
"Using the Open menu does indeed result in letters and symbols as the binary data is being interpreted as ascii characters."

How you get the ascii ?? When I open, it is just garbage.

Call me an ascii lover,
tad

OK, so WORD is the key. But that stuff is not really ascii. Where are the happy faces ? Where are the symbols ?

t.

[Soquili]

Hi Tad,

Good to see you around. ASCII is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The currect ASCII was formerly known as ASCII version 2, but since it is the only version being used for the last 50 or so years it is referred to as ASCII.

Different programs will interpret the data differently. The smilie faces, hearts, etc that you miss (so do I) are still there if you open a command prompt and use the DOS command Type followed by the name of a jpg or gif image filename. Those characters are simply the display representation of ASCII codes that were originally meant to control devices connected to Main Frame computers back in the 50's and 60's before computer monitors were in the form we use now.

When the first micro-computers came about in the 70's they used ASCII for the coding of text and did not use the devices that were available for the Main Frames. They decided to give some different meanings to those codes and have them display those smilies, hearts, clubs, etc. As Printers started to be developed for these new fangled micro-computers they also included those new display characters in the ASCII interpretation software.

Word uses those characters for it's formatting characters instead of the display characters.

IBM before they ever started in the micro-computer business in the early 80's used EBCDIC as the coding for text and control for devices on their Main Frame computers. That is an acronym for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Information Code. I don't know of any equipment that still uses that coding system.

Today more and more software and equipment is using Unicode which is a 2 byte (a word) code.