Problems importing Applix sheet

[Greg Ward <gward python net>]

Every couple of months, I try to import another one of my old Applixware
spreadsheets into Gnumeric; so far, I have yet to find one that imports
without problems.  ;-(  Happily, Jody has always responded to my bug
reports, but I can't remember which ones have been fixed in 1.0 and
which are in 1.1.

(I'm using 1.0.11 from Debian 'unstable' -- I don't have enough space on
my root partition for a full Gnome build system, so I can't play with
Gnumeric 1.1.x; ironically, if I could get rid of Applix, this problem
would go away.  Chicken, meet egg; egg, chicken.)

Anyways, I think I've got something new here -- rather than trying to
directly import the Applix .as file, I thought I'd avoid problems and
export from Applixware to CSV, and import that to Gnumeric.  These are
dead simple spreadsheets -- banking records for the most part -- so I
don't lose much going via CSV.  But alas! even this failed.  For some
reason, Applixware puts ^H (ASCII 8) characters in its CSV output, and
Gnumeric barfs on this.  The exact error message is:

  This file does not seem to be a valid text file.
  The character '?' (ASCII decimal 8) was encountered.
  Most likely your locale settings are wrong.

(It actually used an empty rectangle, not a question mark, but you get
the idea.)

Sigh.  Obviously I can edit the file -- in fact, if I retype the cells
that Applix puts ^H into, it goes away in the output.  Must be some
weird Applixware bug.  Still, would be nice if Gnumeric were a bit more
forgiving in this situation.

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward <gward python net>                         http://www.gerg.ca/
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!