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Text File | 1994-07-18 | 16KB | 291 lines

TextOut/5 WordPerfect 5.0 to ASCII Conversion Program Version 1.2 Another Shareware Product from: CrossCourt Systems Created by: Chris Wolf FEATURES TextOut/5 is a standalone program for IBM-compatible computers that converts WordPerfect 5.0 document files to ASCII. It improves upon WordPerfect's Text Out command, in both the "DOS Text" and "generic word processing" formats. 1. TextOut/5's default format is similar to WordPerfect's "DOS Text" option, except that TextOut/5 expands tabs to spaces, a feature that was omitted from early releases of WordPerfect 5.0. 2. TextOut/5 includes footnotes and endnotes in the ASCII file, while WordPerfect does not convert them at all. 3. In its "generic word processing format", TextOut/5 drops all of the unwanted spaces that WP inserts for centered or right flush text. This makes it easier to align these items properly in the target word processor. 4. TextOut/5 can mark certain font attributes, such as underlining, in the ASCII file by using special characters. This is useful if you want to transfer the ASCII file to another word processor and restore the attributes. 5. TextOut/5 can be run from the DOS command line, and will accept wildcard filespecs. 6. TextOut/5 converts files at about twice the speed of WordPerfect. 7. TextOut/5 can be used by someone who does not have WordPerfect, but who may have received WordPerfect files from elsewhere. 8. TextOut/5 can recover text from files that have been damaged to the point where WordPerfect refuses to load them. TextOut/5's default ASCII format is very much like that of the WordPerfect 4.2 "Save as DOS Text File" command. Indents, tabs and centering are emulated by the use of spaces, and each line is ended with a hard carriage return. The format is suitable for use for electronic mail and many other purposes. See the "OPTIONS" section for information on the other formats TextOut/5 can produce. TextOut/5 omits most page-formatting characteristics. This means that, for example, the left margin is not expanded to spaces; the top and bottom margins are not expanded to blank lines; page breaks, headers, footers, and page numbering are omitted; and line- spacing and top-to-bottom-centering commands are ignored. Overstruck characters are all translated, with a backspace character (ASCII 8) inserted between them. Special characters that could have been entered using the Alt-numeric-pad method are translated correctly to ASCII. Other WP special characters are translated to the ASCII number that corresponds to their WP character number, with the WP character set ignored. Thus, character 8,3 is translated to an ASCII 3. Footnotes and endnotes are placed at the end of the ASCII file. Within the notes, a period and a single space are added after the note number for readability. If a document contains both footnotes and endnotes, the footnotes appear first, followed by the endnotes. The footnote reference numbers in the text are enclosed in square brackets, e.g. [1], while endnote reference numbers are enclosed in braces, e.g. {3}. If a document has been "Fast-Saved", TextOut/5 will still convert it, but will warn you that the formatting may not be correct. Unless you have recently made a change in margins or tabs without having gone to the end of the document, the ASCII format will probably be fine. If you use TextOut/5 often and have problems on Fast-Saved documents, you may want to change your setup options to disable Fast Saves. USE To run TextOut/5, type TO5 followed by two filenames. The first one is the name of the input (WP 5.0) file, the second is the output (ASCII) file. For example: TO5 TEST.DOC TEST.ASC The file names can include wildcards, employed in the same way as with the DOS COPY command. For example, TO5 A:P*.* would convert all files starting with the letter P in the current directory on drive A: to ASCII files of the same name on the current drive and directory, while TO5 \DOCS \TEXT\*.TXT would convert all files from the \DOCS directory to the \TEXT directory while changing their extensions to TXT. If a file already exists under the output name, it will be replaced without warning. If the input and output names are the same, TextOut/5 will not proceed with the conversion. OPTIONS TextOut/5 has many options which can be invoked by "switches" on the command line. These switches must start with a slash or a hyphen. This is followed by a letter identifying the option, and, for some of the switches, a numeric value. The identifying letter can be either upper or lower case and the switches can appear anywhere on the command line -- before, after, or in between the filenames. There must not be any spaces between the slash, the letter and the number. A command that used the /T, /B, and /C switches might look like: TO5 /T /B60 /C62 SAMPL \NEW\SAMPL.ASC There are eight sets of options, controlled by twelve switches. "Generic Format" Options These two options would usually be used together to produce a format similar to WordPerfect's "generic word processing" option. This format has tabs and carriage returns exactly where the operator originally typed them, with no spaces or "soft returns" added. This is usually the best format to use if you want to transfer the resulting ASCII file to another word processor. 1. /R keep only hard <R>eturns This will keep only WordPerfect's hard returns in the ASCII file, in effect turning each paragraph into a single long line of text. It also changes the formatting of footnotes and endnotes, keeping them in-line where they occur rather than placing them at the end of the file. This makes it easier to change them back into footnotes in another word processor, in many cases by using a macro. [[The note numbers are omitted entirely, and the content of a footnote is enclosed in double square brackets, as shown by this sentence.]] {[Endnotes are enclosed as shown by this sentence.]} 2. /T keep <T>ab characters This will keep tab characters in the ASCII file, rather than replacing them with spaces. This differs slightly from WordPerfect's generic format, in that it will also suppress the use of spaces to position text that is centered between the margins or flush to the right margin. Font Attribute Options These eight options, composed of four pairs of switches, allow the start and end of certain font attributes to be marked in the ASCII file using special characters. They would usually be used in conjunction with the generic-format options if you were moving the ASCII file to another word processor and wanted to restore the original format. The naming of these switches is intended to be mnemonic, but is limited somewhat by the use of single letters within a 26- character alphabet. The first switch of each pair, used for the "start attribute" code, should remind you of the function, while the switch for the "end attribute" code simply follows the first alphabetically. Thus /B for bold is paired with /C, and /U for underline is paired with /V. Subscripting and superscripting are less obvious, with /I and /J intended to remind you of things often used as subscripts, while /X and /Y might be used as superscripts (powers). 1. /B# and /C# <B>oldface There are several ways to use these and the following paired options. If you want to mark boldface text using the default characters of { (ASCII 123) at the beginning and } (ASCII 125) at the end, all you have to do is specify /B by itself. If you want to mark boldface text, but want to use different characters, perhaps because the default characters may occur in your document, you can specify either or both of the /B and /C switches with a numeric ASCII value (as indicated by the # symbol in the switch template above). In the case of the /B switch, the ASCII character corresponding to the numeric value will be used to mark the start of boldface; the value given for the /C switch will be used to mark the end. The value must be decimal (i.e., hexadecimal is not allowed) and cannot be zero. Only a single ASCII value can be used for each switch; it is not possible to mark with a multi-character code, such as [B]. So, for example, /B17 would cause a Ctrl-Q to be used at the start of bold text, while /C35 would put # symbols at the end of bold text. In some ways the use of ASCII values is inconvenient, but DOS puts restrictions on the use of many characters on the command line, so something like /B< /C> will not work. The use of numbers gives maximum flexibility. 2. /I# and /J# subscripts Read the description of /B and /C above for a full explanation of how the paired options work. If you use /I without a number, the beginning of a subscript will be marked with ~ (ASCII 126) and the ending with | (ASCII 124). 3. /U# and /V# <U>nderlining Read the description of /B and /C above for a full explanation of how the paired options work. If you use /U without a number, the beginning of underlining will be marked with < (ASCII 60) and the ending with > (ASCII 62). 4. /X# and /Y# superscripts Read the description of /B and /C above for a full explanation of how the paired options work. If you use /X without a number, the beginning of a superscript will be marked with ^ (ASCII 94) and the ending with \ (ASCII 92). Other Options 1. /P# tab-fill <P>itch Word Perfect 5.0 stores all tabs, indents, centering, etc. using absolute measurements, i.e. inches. It also allows you to intermix different font sizes at will. This can cause some inconsistencies in spacing when converting to ASCII files, where an inch is a meaningless measurement and all characters are the same size. When expanding tabs and the like to spaces, TextOut/5 translates WP's internal measurements to 10 spaces per inch. If a document is written primarily in another pitch, this may not give quite the right spacing. This would be most noticeable in tables, particularly if you used a very small font size (large pitch). In this case, the columns in the table might all run together. You can specify a different pitch for the tab filling by using, for example, /P12 to indicate 12 pitch. 2. /H <H>eaderless WP file This option can recover the text from a damaged file that may not be usable with WP. There are many different kinds of damage that may occur to a file, however, and the quality of the results from TextOut/5 may vary widely. BEFORE YOU USE THIS OPTION YOU MUST REMOVE THE HEADER FROM THE FILE. If you don't, the program will still work, but you will probably recover less text than if you had removed the header. To do this, you must have a byte-level editor such as WP's Program Editor, QDOS's QED, the Norton Utilities, etc. and you must know how to use it on binary files. Using the editor, find the initial text of the document and delete everything that precedes it. The WordPerfect header may contain recognizable text that precedes the beginning of the document, but you should delete this anyway; look specifically for the beginning of the body of the document. Don't delete anything after the initial text of the document, even though much of it may look like junk. Save the result under a new name. Run TextOut/5 using this new headerless file as input and specifying the /H option. Chances are that you will want to use the generic-format options as well as the attribute- marking options, because they will produce a file that can be most easily restored to its original format. Remember that the output file will be ASCII, so you should not Retrieve it directly into Word Perfect. Use the Retrieve command found as option 2 on the Text In/Out - DOS Text menu. If the first attempt is unsatisfactory, try editing the headerless file again, this time looking for large blocks of a single character. Try deleting these and running TextOut/5 again. REGISTRATION AND DISTRIBUTION TextOut/5 is Copyright 1988-89, CrossCourt Systems.