Prayers answered. Thanks

From: Robert Blakeley <blakeley_at_biosci.uq.oz.au>
Date: 19 Aug 1994 22:29:23 GMT
Message-ID: <333bo3$so0_at_dingo.cc.uq.oz.au>

Thank you to Oracle staff and another who responded *unofficially* to my query about formatted text in Oracle: <32nflo$h8q_at_dingo.cc.uq.oz.au> <I need to use formatted text (superscripts, subscripts, bold, etc.) in a Computer Managed Learning system under development for an Oracle/Unix host, TCP/IP network and Macintosh (and, later, Windows) client configuration using Forms 4.

Oracle does handle formatted text. In the words of the cognoscenti:

1. <Have you looked at SQL*TextRetrieval? The new version will be called Text Server 3.0, which support popular word processor format for indexing and retrieval. The text server comes with a patched version of Oracle Forms 4.0, which has a proofreader and a WYSIWYG viewer that is compatible with most word processor formats.
2. <I am not sure if you are aware of this, but Oracle has a product called Oracle Book, currently in its second version, which can display and to a degree manage formatted text. If you look at the on-line manuals provided with the CDE Tools, it is written using Oracle Book, which can easily be invoked from any product but particularly from the CDE Tools to display formatted text.
3. <Have you looked at the product Oracle Text Retrieval ? It allows you to store huge amounts of formated text in various wordprocessor formats in the Oracle database, index them and then do all kinds of querying. It is integrated with SQL*Forms 3.0 and Oracle Forms 4.0 or can be called from C programs.

There is also at least one non-Oracle solution:

>About your "formatted text": We work on the Mac, and use RTF functions
to convert back and forth - it works quite well, and RTF is itself cross-platform. Thought you might want to know...

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Again, thanks to all of you. We are licensing OracleBook and TextRetrieval.

Dr Robert L. Blakeley                                     Tel 61-7 365
4612
Department of Biochemistry                            Fax 61-7 365 4699
University of Queensland                                email

blakeley_at_biosci.uq.oz.au
Brisbane, Queensland 4072 Received on Sat Aug 20 1994 - 00:29:23 CEST