🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Oct15.151606.15793@pinet.aip.org>, marc@pinet.aip.org (Marc Wiener) writes:
>In article <esaholm.655853101@polaris> esaholm@polaris.utu.fi (Esa Holmberg) writes:
>>I have about 500 small text files that have been written with
>>Wordperfect 5.0, and now they should be converted to plain
>>ASCII files. I wonder, if there is any ready filter that would
>>do this? I could of course do it manually, but 500 files are
>>some too many..
>>--
>
>Why not use Word Perfect's convert utility?
>
>--
 
WP5 actually makes things easier than that: just use Text In/Out
(ctrl-F5) to create a plain ASCII file. This will export the file,
stripping all control codes and leaving only the text without margins, etc.
If you want margins to appear in the ASCII file - e.g. having all the text
appear with 5 or 10 (or whatever) blank characters at the start, justified,
or similar - then select the "standard" printer and have it print to a file.
(Note: I mean the printer definition "standard", NOT your default printer,
whatever it may be.) If you are printing to a file, you will have to change
names each time, either by redefining the printer destination or renaming
the resulting file. Otherwise each subsequent print job overwrites the
previous one.
 
As for dealing with 500 files, then I suggest a macro that lists
available files, lets you pick out the one you want, and then does the text
out. Next stage would be to somehow automate the whole procedure. Don't
know if it can be done in WP's macro language, but perhaps another solution
would be to use the DOS batch command FOR %%c IN set DO [command]. If you
use this to run WP for each file, all you need to do is specify that
WP automatically run a macro that does the Text Out function and exits.
It would mean loading WP 500 times, so don't expect speed records, but at
least it would work with what you have on hand. To get WP to run a macro,
use WP/m-macroname on the command line. I can't exit from my mainframe to
try running WP and see if the exit code is easy to store in a macro or
not: if you have problems, try creating the macro without exiting, then
edit the macro to add it.
 
 
Dave Halliwell
#! r