quislibet | A day of technical difficulties

Now you would think that a history of the reception of ancient astrology via the Arabs would be more fun and excitement than at which a stick might be shaken. But editing it is presenting me with tedious difficulties, thanks to my ignorance of (La)TeX, the author's (and his assistant's) inability to provide a different electronic format, and the inadequacy of conversion software.

The upshot is, after a couple of days of looking into the problem and asking expert advice, I can rescue the English text, but the numerous Greek words and special characters in Arabic transliteration will need to be retyped -- a particularly nightmarish prospect given the lengthy appendix consisting of long quotations from Greek and Arabic. (Never mind the few cases where Arabic AS Arabic appears -- that's just going to have to be treated as an illustration.)

Separately, I was having a Word 97 problem, but

silas7 and

julishka gave useful and successful advice, which I should have asked long before wasting time on the MS support site. (Incidentally, IE wouldn't display the site, but Netscape did...)

In other news, I had hoped to go hang out in Providence tomorrow and possibly Do Lunch with the Pancake Man, but it seems I will be working extra days this week, and if I hang out in any libraries at all it will need to be B.U.'s -- something came in through Interlibrary Loan that can't be removed from the library. Worse, it's on microfilm. Sigh.