Copyright 1999, Aerospace Software Ltd.
217 Edgedale Gardens NW, Calgary, Alberta, T3A 4M7, Canada
Phone: 403+241-8773, Fax: 403+241-8841
E-Mail: Aerosoft@AerospaceSoftware.com
Web: http://www.AerospaceSoftware.com
Version 1.0, 1999.
This program is shareware. You may give copies to your friends, but you should register it with us for a small fee of US $20. You may use it on as many machines as you want, but every person, natural or corporate, should please register at least one copy. In return, you will receive a personalized key file that will remove the nag screen and cause the file headers to be more pleasing.
PTT was born out of sheer desperation, when we had to convert several thousand WordPerfect (Corel Corp) files from older to newer formats. We also wanted to index the files using Hyper Text. The problem was that we had no old word processing programs that could read these files.
The latest versions of WordPerfect can convert between most file formats, but converting thousands of files one by one is not a good prospect and will wear out several mice, not to mention one's patience. We clearly needed a program that would churn unattended through thousands of files with various formats and convert them all to a generic format.
At first we tried a simple stripping of control characters, but the results looked very ugly. Furthermore, newer file formats such as WordPerfect 5.1 and later, starts off with a header, which made the final result so ugly that it was quite useless.
Consequently, we had to analyze the data files in order to learn something about their structure. This effort required a large amount of patience but it paid off in the end. The conversions were kept simple, to allow maximum compatibility with word processing and hyper text editors.
Corel kept their file formats pretty much the same since version 6 of WordPerfect. Even so, versions 8 and 9 can create files that will cause version 7 to crash when one tries to open the file. PTT can be used to strip the control characters from a file so that it can be read by any word processor. Most of the formatting will be lost, but it can save one an awful amount of retyping when your word processor won't open a file at all.
PTT was designed to be easy to use, whether you want to convert a single one, or several hundred files at once.
Files can be selected in two ways. If you click the 'File...' button you will get a standard file dialog. You can select one or many files for simultaneous conversion in a single batch. To select multiple files, keep the 'Ctrl' key pressed while clicking the mouse on the file names. Click OK and the list of files will be transferred to the 'From' box.
If you have Windows Explorer running, then you can highlight the files that you want to convert and then drag and drop them with a mouse onto the PTT program dialog. The selected filenames will be transferred to the 'From' box, as above.
The maximum number of files that can be converted at once depends on the length of the file names but if we assume an average filename of 20 characters then the limit is about 3000 files!
You don't need to know what format a file has and the 'auto' radio button is selected by default. In this mode, PTT will try to determine the file format and pick the best conversion algorithm for every file in the 'From' box. If the files in the 'From' box have different formats, then it is essential to use the 'auto' mode.
In the event that the conversion looks ugly, you can manually try the other formats and see whether it works any better, but all the files in the 'From' box should preferably be of the same type when you do this manually, else the results may be confusing.
Check either or both of the 'Plain Text' or 'Hyper Text' boxes to select an output format.
Click the 'Convert' button to start the conversion process. The new files will be written to the same folder on the disk drive as the originals. The new files will acquire the extensions '.txt' or '.html' to distinguish them from the originals. The original files will not be changed in any way.
Files in the plain text '.txt' format can be opened by any word processor. These files will contain all the content of the original files but almost all formatting will be lost, except for tabs and indents. This is a good way to move the contents of a document between incompatible word processing programs.
Files in the hyper text '.html' format can be opened by any web browser. Some of the formatting will be retained, but web browsers handle text differently from word processors. For instance, the paragraphs will change shape when the browser is resized on screen.