OVER 2 YOU, 037 (05/07/01)

PRAYERS ANSWERED

On a recent trip to South Africa I visited a delightful seaside village called Pater Noster, which I knew to be the opening words of the Latin version of the Lord's Prayer. A trinket shop in the village had on view a poster divided into about 24 panels, each depicting the Lord's Prayer in a different language. Unfortunately the poster was not for sale. Having arrived home I decided to produce, as a computer exercise, a booklet containing as many different versions of the panels on the poster as possible. Being a complete novice, can anyone direct me to a source, or sources of the Lord's Prayer on the Internet in as many different foreign languages as possible?

W. Quinlan, Verwood Dorset

There is a site called 'Languages of the Bible' at: http://www.pinette.net/chris/bible/index.html It contains the text of St.John 3.16 ("For God so loved the word ....") and, in most cases The Lord's Prayer, in numerous languages. In at least one case (Old Slavonic) you can also hear the prayer being spoken. However, I should point out that, in some versions of the prayer in languages with which I am familiar, I have detected some misprints or spelling mistakes.

David Williams, Leighton Buzzard

I have contacted the Bible Society at Swindon and their staff kindly offered to send Mr Quinlan what he wants by post. Anyone else who would like the Lord`s Prayer in different languages should contact The British and Foreign Bible Society, Swindon, or www.biblesociety.org.uk.

Rev. Ron Armstrong

Well, it's not the Lord's Prayer, but the first three books of Genesis in thousands of languages as part of the Rosetta Project (www.rosettaproject.org), which by storing translations of these most translated words hopes to preserve languages which are likely to vanish.

John Ticehurst

Have a look at: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/ which gives access to The Lord's Prayer in 1202 languages and dialects.

Angela Cliffe

BACKGAMMON CHALLENGE

I was wondering if anyone could suggest a site to download a program to play Backgammon solo. The ones I have tried do not adhere to the basic rules or blatantly bend the laws of dice probability, i.e. throwing six doubles back to back when the computer is in a loosing position. This is driving me crazy.

C. I. Cox, via email

Jellyfish (http://jelly.effect.no/) is my program of choice. Although it does seem to throw the right double at the most in-opportune moment, the author is at pains to insist that all throws are random. It copes well with forced back games, the major weakness with all  other computer based backgammon software that I've tried, and all-in-all it's a good piece of freeware/shareware.

Peter Hillier-Brook

A better bet would be to go to Yahoo games site and play an online version of Backgammon against real people!  There are always about 2000 people in the Yahoo backgammon rooms. 

Tony Reeves

JOINED UP EMAIL

I often receive information in plain text format and would like to put it into Word documents or a web page. Usually this results in a boring session clicking the end of each line and pressing delete to "join up" all the text by getting rid of "hard" carriage returns etc. Does anyone know of a utility, which will do this automatically?  Usually it's not too long a job but I just got a text document that is a megabyte long!

Richard Limebear, via email

Assuming that you are using MS Word as your word processor and the document is open:

* It is not essential, but it will help to make clear what is happening on the screen if you select Format/Paragraph/Lines After/12/OK; then select Tools/Options.  On the View tab, under Nonprinting Characters ensure that 'Paragraph Marks' is selected and click OK.  You will see that there is a Paragraph Mark at the end of each line and, where a new paragraph starts, a line that only contains a Paragraph Mark.  Herein lies the solution because a single Paragraph Mark marks each Line Break while new paragraphs are marked by two consecutive Paragraph Marks.  The required situation is that the single Line Break Paragraph Marks are replaced by a <space> and the double Paragraph Marks at the end of each paragraph are replaced by a single Paragraph Mark.

* Go to Edit/Replace.  Under 'Find what', insert TWO paragraph marks, which can be found as the first item in the list that comes up on selecting 'More' and then 'Special'.  Under 'Replace with' insert any string of characters that is unlikely to occur in the text: e.g. '@@@' or '*4*?'.  Click 'Replace all'.  All of the real paragraph breaks are now marked with whatever meaningless string you put into the 'Replace with' box.

* Go to Edit/Replace again.  Under 'Find what' include ONE paragraph mark.  Under 'Replace with' type one <space>.  Click 'Replace all'.  All of the unwanted single paragraph marks at the end of each line will be replaced by a space.

* Go again to Edit/Replace.  Under 'Find what' include the @@@ or whatever string it was you inserted as replacement for the double Paragraph Marks.  Under 'Replace with' insert a single paragraph mark.  Click 'Replace all'.

* Return the document to your preferred formatting.

You will almost certainly have to do some editing in detail, but this should have solved most of the problem.  Of course, if this is something that is often required, the process can be automated using a macro, and Richard Limebear would then have the utility he seeks.

Kieran O'Kelly - via e-mail

STOCKS, SHARES & ISAS

I need, ideally, to run a spreadsheet (Excel) with all my stocks and shares listed on it, and be able to download (off the net) daily or more often prices so it can update automatically. Can this be done without getting tied up with a portfolio with an on-line company, and having to be registered with a supplier of said prices?

Chris J Catton, via email

Does anybody know of a site that will enable me to keep track of the value of my ISAs?  The site would need to be able to factor in the fact that I make monthly payments into each of my ISAs.

James Watson, via email

I recommend www.moneyextra.com, prices are up-dated every 15 minutes, no junk emails (unless you want them), it's a very good free site and I have been using it for 3 years.

Jeffrey Stothers

JUNK FAX REVENGE

I am being constantly plagued by junk fax calls late at night. I have tried getting through to the companies concerned but they are invariably on high-cost premium rate lines. I want revenge! I'm looking for a PC fax program (or a fax machine) that I can configure to work very slowly - preferably taking an hour or so to receive a fax -- so that it will cost the company sending it a small fortune.

John Russell, via email

I find that by using a 07050 'personal number' that redirects faxes to my 'real' fax number at 37.5p per minute I don't get any junk messages. This also seems to work in avoiding telemarketers phone calls from the various businesses that insist in asking for your phone number for warranties etc.

Alastair Johnston, via email

OBSOLETE COMPUTERS

I am trying to help a colleague, who over many years has collated the day-to-day actions of hundreds of RN Ships. The problem is that the initial files were created on an Olytext machine (I presume a very early word processor). I have been told that by saving the files on the Olytext machine as ASCII files, we should be able to transfer them easily to a PC, but the PC doesn't recognise the disk. Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can overcome this? I have heard of a company that can transfer the files, but they are asking for around £25 per page and these files could run into 2000+ pages.

Trevor Muston, via email

I have a copy of the 22Disk program mentioned in Over 2 You June 14th and would be happy to send a copy to Trevor Muston, if he has not already obtained one. When I needed some files from an Epson QX-10 CPM computer some 10 years ago, I ran the transfer program on the disk without any problem, even with 5.25" disks.

I have also used the emulator program on the disk, which makes the PC behave as a CPM machine able to run CPM software, which might be useful to access database files for example.

For both programs, knowledge of CPM commands is required, particularly the PIP command. The important point to remember with this command is that it works opposite to the DOS counterpart COPY command, ie to copy a file or set of files you type PIP C: A:*.*, instead of COPY A:*.* C: (and I think you have to be in the correct sub-directory on C:  before running the command).

Roger Grimes, grimesinc@lineone.net

WOODCUT SOFTWARE

I am a member of a society that deals with the English Civil War period. I have an excellent 17th Century typeface from Crazy Diamond, which allows me to write in the style of the time, but the pictures are causing me a problem. I want to take a photograph and convert it into something approaching a woodcut or engraving. I am not trying to satisfy academic purists, but merely trying to provide a compatible illustration to go with the words. I could do a drawing to be scanned in, but my hand is not good enough. Can anyone help?

Charles White, via email

Mr White might be interested in an (somewhat technical) article on ways of replicating early printing techniques. It went a bit above my head but then so too do most things to do with computers... The web site can be found at: http://www.nr.no/~wolfgang/copper/copper.html

Tim Dexter, Southend On Sea, Essex

CAN YOU HELP?

I would like to produce static geometric images similar to those one could generate with Spirograph, or even the intriguing patterns of fractal geometry. Does anyone know of such a program?

Ian Thomas, Gwynedd

Does anyone know if I can buy in slim light box to fit under the lid of my Artec scanner so that I can scan some black and white postcard size negatives left to me by my father, taken in the twenties?

John Elstone, via email

I am on the brink of installing a gas-fired central heating system in my house, does anyone know of any software, or a web site, that can assist in the layout and specification, such as working out the size of the boiler, radiatiors etc.?

Mike Kenny, via enail

As part of a research project into medieval churches, I want to plot the geographical location of various architectural features in the UK. I need a package, which will accept grid references and plot them on a simple outline map using different symbols for each feature. The map may be of the whole country, or of individual counties or regions. I dare say that expensive GIS systems will do this - is there any shareware or cheapware that does the job?

Trevor Cooper, via email