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PHP is a scripting language, much like Perl. As with nearly all scripting
languages, PHP can be created in Word, as it is simply a text file that a
server parses for instructions. I have to wonder, though, if this is what
you are really looking at because while your submitter could have
constructed stories for a newsletter in PHP, it would kind of be overkill
and more likely she would have use PHP to create the structure of the
document. Languages like Perl and PHP can make short work of pages meant to
be rendered "on the fly" and many people do construct newsletters this way.
To create a page on the fly means to be able to plug stories into an
automatic template of sorts so you don't have to recreate the columns and
other layout each time.
Is it possible that your submitter created a newsletter using PHP rather
than stories for it? I'm not ruling out that these are not PHP files.
Probably the easiest way to check would be to open them with notepad and if
you can see the contents and they seem to be the text you needed then cut an
paste the content and be done with it; if you can view the content and it
seems to be a bunch of commands intermixed with text, then you probably have
a PHP file on your hands; if it comes out as a bunch of gobblity-gook, then
she used something else entirely. Probably the easiest thing to do, though,
would be to pick up the phone and ask the submitter how to access the files.
Good Luck,
Charles T. Rich
Technical Writer
Product Development
Follett Software Company
Andrea McCauley asked:
I have received files on a diskette that have .php file extensions. These
are supposed to be files for a newsletter. She says she did them in
Microsoft Word but my Word (2K) will not open the files. I was told that
.php files are Microsoft Publisher files. I tried to open them in Publisher
and that doesn't work either.
In researching on the Internet, I see that .php files are associated with
web files somehow. I tried to open the files in Microsoft Frontpage and
that's not working either.
Can you tell me what I can use to open these files?
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