SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (10/21/87)
Thanks for the kind words about your favorite word processors, but I'd still prefer one that doesn't require all the intermediate steps (PIE Writer files and mainframe files are flat compatible with one another -- sadly Hayden is kaput and Spinnaker <which bought Hayden> appears to have no interest in porting PIE to ProDOS <or providing it with access to the Auxilliary memory either for that matter>). I have yet to see a word processor worthy of the name that can't be cajoled into "printing" into a disk file (the good ones will eliminate the top, bottom, and left margins as well so that a simple mainframe text processor can produce very nice printouts). Heck, even the original VisiCalc would do that much (as will other spreadsheets). That's an intermediate step that's a nuisance, but a small one. Ah, but the difficulty occurs going the other way! Try downloading a file from your local neighborhood power-number cruncher and see how your Apple-whichever likes that! You can't strip ALL of the carriage returns because you want to keep those at the end of paragraphs (some of which will just happen to end exactly at the right margin), and if the document contains tables, carriage returns within them need to be retained too. It IS possible to filter such files IF they contain a double carriage return everytime a single one is needed by the word processor, but mainframe files (especially when received from elsewhere) may not be in a form that allows for that. Since PIE stores by lines anyway it has no problem with mainframe files (which store the same way). It's a nice, all in core, friendly little editor (and text processor). One of these days I'll be able to afford a Macintosh II+ (the one coming next year with the 68030), 4 Mbytes or so of memory, and a LaserWriter (I keep buying Lotto tickets and hoping its my turn) and then I won't need a mainframe anymore (except perhaps as a glorious bbs). Meanwhile, it would be nice to have a ProDOS word processor that allows for files of 50K or so and saves files by lines instead of by paragraphs. --------------------- ARPA: sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu Murphy A. Sewall BITNET: SEWALL@UCONNVM School of Business Admin. UUCP: ...ihnp4!psuvax1!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL University of Connecticut
sipples@husc2.UUCP (sipples) (10/21/87)
WordPerfect seems to do the job. It offers the following features in
relation to ordinary text files:
o Loading a text file as a macro keeps all CRs intact ("Hard Returns"
in WordPerfect's language).
o Loading a text file normally (using Retrieve) will place "Hard
Returns" only at the end of paragraphs.
(Formatting text for inclusion in your own Apple-produced documents
takes seconds using the Rewrite key.)
o Saving ordinary text files (margins/page endings removed) is done
using the Text Out option under the Extra command line.
o WordPerfect supports files of "unlimited size." The only limit is
storage (and the operating system). Although working on huge files
slows down WordPerfect, it can be done fairly easily. A GS or
accelerator is recommended.
WordPerfect also comes with utilities to port documents to and from AppleWriter
and AppleWorks formats. A few warnings:
o WordPerfect doesn't like loading text files as macros should the text
file contain bytes with the high bit set. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be
text under ProDOS, would it?) If, for some reason, the high bit is set
on some or all bytes in a downloaded "text" file, a kludgey solution is
to use Apple's CONVERT to port the files to DOS 3.3 then back to
ProDOS. CONVERT will set the high bit properly for TXT files.
o Do not use WordPerfect's CONVERT utility on TXT files. It doesn't
seem to work. Instead, load them as macros or normally, depending
on how you'd like the text formatted.
[Timothy Sipples: sipples@husc3.BITNET, sipples%husc2@husc6.harvard.edu,
...ihnp4!seismo!harvard!husc6!husc2!sipples]patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring) (10/24/87)
Murphy,
I can easily understand your problem; I, also, can get the
carriage returns and linefeeds out of text files downloaded from
IBM/Clone BBS, Compu$erve, The SOURCE, GEnie, etc.; the other
dday I downloaded a vitips text file and a vi extended command
reference text file; smack dab in the middle of the text were
these ### and it seemed more trouble than it was worth to fool
around taking all those characters out of the middle of the
file.
What do others do with their text files? Is it possible
to get all the control characters out of text file? I can use
CHFORM on side 2 of my AEPRO disk to take out the c/r and l/f's
but when the ## are in the middle of the file as well, that
poses a problem I haven't been able to solve yet.
yet. Is anyone using WordPerfect? Does the same thing happen?
--
Patt Haring UUCP: ..cmcl2!phri!dasys1!patth
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