peewee@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Paul Watson) (07/24/90)
I am trying to convert files from DOS Nota Bene to be used on MacIntosh with Microsoft Word. Nota Bene(NB) has a special format called DCA which it can use to save files. It is supposed to be a standard format which many programs use (haven't found another such program yet!). I thought it would be like the RTF format that Word uses. Unfortunately, when I create a DCA file with Nota Bene, I can't determine if the text is there (all I really need is the text) because there is an EOF character in the DCA format(ugh.) I expect to find text in there somewhere because the man at Dragon Fly Software (makers of NB) said I should be able to see it with Norton Utilities. Since I don't have access to Norton Utilities, I brought the file over to the MacIntosh with Apple File Exchange. Then when brought up in Word, absolutely no text! Just lots of Foreign chars (ID>0x80). So I ftp'd it (Using IP) to Unix and looked at it with octal dump. Still no text. Last I tried stripping off bit 8 with a c program. I saw text, but it was nonsense. Is DCA text stored in a non-ascii form? Am I corrupting the data in my file transfers? How can I get ascii text out of a DCA file? Is Nota Bene not creating the DCA file right? Send help-- Thanks, Paul Watson. University of California, Santa Cruz.
dmiller@CS2.CS.WSU.EDU (07/24/90)
DCA/RFT is one of the many "standards" IBM has generously given the world. As you have found, it is not anything like Microsoft's RTF format. Luckily there is a solution. There is a very good (and inexpensive) product on the market called R-Doc/X which performs document conversions between many wordprocessor formats. Two of which are DCA/RFT and MS-Word! R-Doc/X is available from: Advanced Computer Innovations 30 Burncoat Way Pittsford, NY 14534-2216 Phone: (716) 454-3188 Fax: (716) 383-8428 ********************************************************************** David L. Miller Internet: millerd@prime.tricity.wsu.edu (?) Systems Analyst or dmiller@cs2.cs.wsu.edu (reliable) WSU Tri-Cities Bitnet: MILLERD@WSUVM1 100 Sprout Rd. Voice: (509) 375-9245 or 375-3176 Richland, WA 99352 >>>>>>>>>>> Support the FSF <<<<<<<<<<<
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (07/24/90)
In article <5378@darkstar.ucsc.edu> peewee@ucschu.ucsc.edu (Paul Watson) writes: > Is DCA text stored in a non-ascii form? Yes, DCA text is stored in EBCDIC. Word Perfect uses DCA, too, and it's a royal pain to convert it... not only is it EBCDIC, but it's one of those IBM all-singing all-dancing kitchen-sink protocols. Probably not as bad as Blue Glue (SNA), but pretty bad. How it became a standard on the IBM-PC is something I *don't* want to know about. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U` <peter@ficc.ferranti.com>