Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 November 6

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November 6

Convert Borland Sprint file to Microsoft Word

Is there a way to convert a file from Sprint (word processor) to Microsoft Word? (I googled and didn't find a way.) Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:48, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

According to Corel, WordPerfect (WP) can import Sprint files. If you have access to a copy of WP, you could import it and save it as a Word or RTF file, or perhaps see if Word can read the WP format better than WP can save Word format.-gadfium 04:24, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I used to use WordPerfect (years ago). I'll check into that, thanks. There is a 30-day free trial. I have one file in particular to convert, but I'll gather up all of my Sprint files, get the free trial and convert them to something else. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

I downloaded the trial version of Word Perfect. It read in the Sprint file just as it should and I saved it to a MS Word doc file. I read that file into MS Word, and it was just as it should be! Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:54, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Cool!-gadfium 08:13, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

CSS-Only Solution for Forcing 480p on YouTube Without Diminishing Display Size

I am very interested in finding an elegant CSS-only solution for forcing SD 480p on YouTube without diminishing the video display size, to use with Stylish/Stylus on Mozilla Firefox (i.e., the display size should remain 1280x720, but the quality should be SD rather than HD) — GX, May 1971 (talk) 03:43, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

previously clicked-on Wikipedia hyperlinks eventually changing back to blue from purple

Hello,

Feel free to skip to the last paragraph if you just want the nuts and bolts of my question. I have tried to find a solution to this problem and have come up so short that I suspect it may not be possible to achieve my goal here, but since this is the only website I want this solution for, I'm hoping you guys might have an answer or some insight.

Over the past several years I have chosen to make a hobby out of thoroughly reading the Wikipedia articles for old movies, then renting and watching them after I've learned as much as possible about their interesting productions or their prominent actors. I do that by clicking on the personnel involved in the movie from the summary sidebar area and from the list of actors/actresses cast in the movie. I use Google Chrome for this, which is the web browser I use for most other things.

I know that I'm done reading about a movie when all of the blue hyperlinks in the article have been clicked on and made purple. It is aesthetically satisfying to scroll through a long article and see no blue links in it, and it's a portion of the overall enjoyment I get from the hobby.

The problem is that over the years I've watched a few hundred movies and thus clicked on a few thousand actors and other production personnel. I do not always remember who I've clicked on and will not always have remembered a minor character actor's details enough to avoid me reading their entire article over again if their name doesn't remain purple when they appear in other movies. My vague goal is that after a lot of movies have been watched that there won't be nearly as many blue hyperlinks in the pages for my next movies and thus I will save time on reading about them, a process which can take up a lot of my day.

Is there any setting I can change or feature that I can ensure is turned off (perhaps of my antivirus program) that would help me permanently retain my browsing history, especially as it pertains to Wikipedia hyperlinks? The only solution I've found is to periodically spend as much as two full days going through the movies I've already seen and re-clicking on their personnel to achieve the satisfying aesthetic and to hopefully save myself future time. It is especially frustrating when I take a long-ish break from this hobby as when I return the links are all blue again without me having made much progress on more movies watched.

Jordanmiller335 (talk) 17:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I think Chrome keeps your browsing history for about three months. It will be less if you clear your browsing history, or have set it to automatically clear when you close your browser. To keep it indefinitely, the browser extension History Trends Unlimited may help. I have no experience of using this extension myself.-gadfium 05:13, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

• To elaborate on the above reply...

First, a little bit of theory. The way visited links work is that your browser (which is in all likelihood one of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Edge) retains a history of visited websites. When you visit a website, that website sends stylistic instructions to the browser as to how to display stuff, including how to differentiate page links depending on whether they have been visited. (Notice that the website does not know by that mechanism which pages you have visited; furthermore, the browser can disregard the website's instructions.) Most websites use a blue-ish color for standard links, but almost all use something purple for visited links (why? probably because users got used to it by now).

The most probable cause of purple links going blue in your case is the browser history being lost. Can you tell us which browser you use, and whether you have some weird settings on it? Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 08:49, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Per the original post, they're using Chrome. Since this is a WP-centred request, I'm wondering if there's some setting regarding pages on your watchlist that could be exploited? For example, if they added every read article to their watchlist, could that somehow be used to maintain the links in the browser history? Matt Deres (talk) 01:12, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

• You guys are all right on point in understanding what my goal is; I was surprised and delighted by the link to the browsing history extension. Unfortunately in the notes for that extension it says that since it keeps its history separate from Chrome, it won't retain the color of clicked-on links. It would work for practically anything else in proximity to my issue, it seems.

I do indeed use Chrome, but I am very open to switching web browsers if any of the others are known to keep their history at least longer than the 3-ish months that Chrome keeps it for, and would even dedicate that browser solely to this hobby if it was an issue of my using it for secondary purposes flooding out the history kept for Wikipedia. I would also be willing to mark every article in my watchlist as was mentioned, if that seems like a solution. I haven't changed any notable settings in Chrome as I couldn't find any that would help this. I have noticed that my antivirus will sometimes clean my temporary internet files while the computer is idle and was unsure if that was a cause, but I turned that feature off. Jordanmiller335 (talk) 21:36, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

In Firefox you can go to [about:config] and set places.history.expiration.max_pages to a large value so that the history does not wrap. It would normally be about 100000 pages. However having a large history does use memory in your computer, so make sure you have heaps of RAM to hold it all. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:50, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply Graeme! The solution I found was that Internet Explorer & Microsoft Edge are both affected by the Internet Options control panel page, wherein I can set the maximum days that history is kept to as much as 999 days from their default 20 days. I just tried your remedy in Firefox and it would let me go to modify the value but when I would save the value it reverted back to what it had always been, even after re-launching the web browser. I am satisfied with dedicating the Edge browser to this hobby. Thanks again! Jordanmiller335 (talk) 15:55, 12 November 2018 (UTC)