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In article <4896@tank.uchicago.edu> zag@tank.uchicago.edu (Zack Gardner) writes:
>Help! A very mysterious thing is happening to my Expressionist DA.
>Every time I try to launch it, a dialog box pops up with the message
>"This picture expression looks like garbage data! Sorry, I can't
>understand it. (-2007)", and then I'm landed back in the finder.
>This problem cropped up unexpectedly after months of trouble-free
>use. I'm running on an SE/30 with 4MB.
>
>Any ideas??
>
>--Zack


Are you by any chance using Microsoft Word 4.0? If so, check out the following,
which is exerpted from "The Math Axis."  "The Math Axis" is a newletter of
Prescience, apparently the new name of Allan Bonadio Associates, publisher
of Expressionist.  For those of you who don't know, but are interested,
Expressionist is an application and DA for building mathematical expressions
(formulas) that can be pasted into word processing documents.  The information
that is pasted is picture data: the resulting expression is treated as a
graphic by the word processing application.

<START OF EXCERPT>
"Microsoft Word 4.0
 Here We Go Again

   "... Often when you copy a picture out of a Word 4.0 document and paste it
back into Expressionist or other graphics program, it may give you an error
message or tell you the picture information is garbled and unuseable. It may
freeze, bomb, or do some similarly nasty thing.

   "The problem arises because Word 4.0 destroys the picture information when
you paste a pictaure in.  Consequently, your graphics program can no longer
recognize the pictures and 'chokes' when you paste them back in.

   "If, when you open Expressionist, you get an error message saying the
picture information is garbage, it is because the 'expression scratchpad'
file got corrupted.  To remedy this problem, do this:  ... throw the
'expression scratchpad' file in the Trash can or just move it out of the
System Folder.

   "We have determined that the problem is caused by -- you guessed it --
a bug in Microsoft Word 4.0.  Prescience is working with Microsoft to
resolve the problem.  At this point, some people at Microsoft acknowledge
that it is their problem, yet others are unwilling to take responsibility.
It could take quite a while to come up with a fix in Word 4.01 unless lots
of people contact Microsoft and complain about it. ...

   "In the meantime you have two ways to work around the bug ...
1. You can paste your equations into the Scrapbook before you paste them
into Word.  If you want to edit an equation that you have pasted into Word,
copy it out of the Scrapbook.
2. You can use a different word processor."
<END OF EXCERPT>

===========================================================================
    Ken Lindahl                                "Got to kick at the darkness
    Advanced Technology Planning                  'til it bleeds daylight."
    University of California at Berkeley                  -- Bruce Cockburn
    lindahl@violet.berkeley.edu
===========================================================================