18 Dec
2006
18 Dec
'06
1:48 a.m.
On 18 Dec 2006 at 0:14, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote:
Anyone had success importing Vax WPS files into a
modern
wordprocessor? I had heard that older Wordperfect's could read in Vax
WPS files, anyone know for a fact?
Are you talking about WPS I files a la DECStation?
Cheers,
Chuck
18 Dec
18 Dec
9:29 a.m.
@Chuck --- Off of Vax 750's and 780's They appear to be Word-11
and/or WPS All in One files, I can read the text, but its sandwiched
inbetween tons of formatting information, and I've got hundreds of files
to go through and manually cleaning them up is tedious, so I was hoping
there might be in import util or a modern WP that could simply read
these files in natively and keep the formating.
Curt
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 18 Dec 2006 at 0:14, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote:
Anyone had success importing Vax WPS files into a
modern
wordprocessor? I had heard that older Wordperfect's could read in Vax
WPS files, anyone know for a fact?
Are you talking about WPS I files a la DECStation?
Cheers,
Chuck
10 a.m.
> On 18 Dec 2006 at 0:14, Curt @ Atari Museum
wrote:
>
>
>> Anyone had success importing Vax WPS files into a modern
>> wordprocessor? I had heard that older Wordperfect's could read in
Vax
>> WPS files, anyone know for a fact?
>>
>
In my InterMedia conversion system, I found a DEC WPS protocol. If you could
mail me a file, I could try if this protocol is correct.
Nico
10:11 a.m.
@Chuck --- Off of Vax 750's and 780's
They appear to be Word-11
and/or WPS All in One files, I can read the text, but its
Please note, Word-11 is not a DEC product, so they probably aren't in that
format. (Though if anyone has a copy for RSTS, or knows where to get it,
please hook me up :)
10:27 a.m.
It was written...
I'm not positive, but I was thinking that the 3rd party word processor for
RT11 called "Saturn" had it's default document file end in .WPS as well.
Jay
@Chuck ---
Off of Vax 750's and 780's They appear to be Word-11
and/or WPS All in One files, I can read the text, but its
Please note, Word-11 is not a DEC product, so they probably aren't in that
format. (Though if anyone has a copy for RSTS, or knows where to get it,
please hook me up :) 
6:15 p.m.
At 09:27 AM 12/18/2006 -0600, you wrote:
It was written...
I'm not positive, but I was thinking that the 3rd party word processor for
RT11 called "Saturn" had it's default document file end in .WPS as well.
I'll confirm that. I ran Saturn WP, and their Calc thing, on RT-11 for a
while.
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@Chuck
--- Off of Vax 750's and 780's They appear to be Word-11
and/or WPS All in One files, I can read the text, but its
Please note, Word-11 is not a DEC product, so they probably aren't in that
format. (Though if anyone has a copy for RSTS, or knows where to get it,
please hook me up :)
11:31 a.m.
On 18 Dec 2006 at 9:11, Julian Wolfe wrote:
Ah, okay. The DECStation WPS I files are nothing short of bizarre;
it took quite a bit of work to unravel them. But then, you can't
even see clear text in them. Sounds like the VAX version is quite a
bit more straightforward.
Cheers,
Chuck
@Chuck ---
Off of Vax 750's and 780's They appear to be Word-11
and/or WPS All in One files, I can read the text, but its
Please note, Word-11 is not a DEC product, so they probably aren't in that
format. (Though if anyone has a copy for RSTS, or knows where to get it,
please hook me up :) 
1:41 p.m.
Julian Wolfe wrote:
I have copys of Word-11, and DecWord, on 800 BPI magtape,
but have no way to read them.
Word-11 was made by DPD, and DecWord was based on that.
The differences between the two are mostly just a version
difference. I think DecWord will read Word-11 files without
any problems.
If you wanted to convert from WPS-8 to WordPerfect, then I
could offer my code at http://srv.net/~kth .
I think that the internal format is "similiar" to Word-11, but
Word-11 didn't pack 3 characters into 2 12-bit words.
you might be able to use it as a basis for understanding the
format and writing your own conversion program, but
reverse engineering would still be required.
@Chuck ---
Off of Vax 750's and 780's They appear to be Word-11
and/or WPS All in One files, I can read the text, but its
Please note, Word-11 is not a DEC product, so they probably aren't in that
format. (Though if anyone has a copy for RSTS, or knows where to get it,
please hook me up :)
1:46 p.m.
Kevin Handy wrote:
If you wanted to convert from WPS-8 to WordPerfect,
then I
could offer my code at http://srv.net/~kth .
oops. Please change that to http://onewest.net/~kth
2:04 p.m.
On 18 Dec 2006 at 11:41, Kevin Handy wrote:
If you wanted to convert from WPS-8 to WordPerfect,
then I
could offer my code at http://srv.net/~kth .
I think that the internal format is "similiar" to Word-11, but
Word-11 didn't pack 3 characters into 2 12-bit words.
you might be able to use it as a basis for understanding the
format and writing your own conversion program, but
reverse engineering would still be required.
We must be looking at different versions of WPS 8. The version that
I have (on RX01 diskettes) packs 4 characters into 2 12-bit words,
but the disk storage layout is a bit bizarre (3 physical sectors with
data interleaved to produce a single logical sector) and there are
numerous "escape" codes for switching to upper/lower case, bold,
underline, ruler, etc.
I've got a converter that I wrote that converts from WPS-8 RX01
images to HTML files. Why HTML? Because people already know how to
cut and paste HTML into their word processor and HTML can be read by
any web browser, regardless of hardware platform.
Cheers,
Chuck
3:36 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 18 Dec 2006 at 11:41, Kevin Handy wrote:
This program is for the DecMate II version (RX50), and
it's been a while since I've done anything with it, so I may be
misremembering things. It deals with with the weirdness in
the 8-bit/128(?) byte RX50 format. It predates HTML, and thus
doesn't even pretend to support it. It outputs to WordPerfect
version 5 format. It also tries to handle overprinted (foreign)
characters.
Every version of Word-??, DecWord-?? seemed to use
very different file formats, so I'm not surprised that the
RX01 version is different from the RX50 version. But you
had to do a RX transfer to transport them, so they could
do a format conversion at the same time.
I no longer have any DecMate II users, so the program
has suffered from stagnation. But, I thought it might be
useful to others.
If you wanted to convert from WPS-8 to
WordPerfect, then I
could offer my code at http://srv.net/~kth .
I think that the internal format is "similiar" to Word-11, but
Word-11 didn't pack 3 characters into 2 12-bit words.
you might be able to use it as a basis for understanding the
format and writing your own conversion program, but
reverse engineering would still be required.
We must be looking at different versions of WPS 8. The version that
I have (on RX01 diskettes) packs 4 characters into 2 12-bit words,
but the disk storage layout is a bit bizarre (3 physical sectors with
data interleaved to produce a single logical sector) and there are
numerous "escape" codes for switching to upper/lower case, bold,
underline, ruler, etc.
I've got a converter that I wrote that converts from WPS-8 RX01
images to HTML files. Why HTML? Because people already know how to
cut and paste HTML into their word processor and HTML can be read by
any web browser, regardless of hardware platform.
4:32 p.m.
On 18 Dec 2006 at 13:36, Kevin Handy wrote:
Every version of Word-??, DecWord-?? seemed to use
very different file formats, so I'm not surprised that the
RX01 version is different from the RX50 version. But you
had to do a RX transfer to transport them, so they could
do a format conversion at the same time.
I believe that there is also a version of WPS for the Rainbow, called
WPS-16. IIRC, it had a conversion function from WPS-Plus RX-50
diskettes to WPS-16. And, if my memory isn't failing me, it wasn't a
DEC product.
Cheers,
Chuck
4:54 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 18 Dec 2006 at 13:36, Kevin Handy wrote:
I've used it, but WPS-16 doesn't sound right.
WPS-Plus for the rainbow version, maybe?
The transfer between the systems usually relied on
"DX" transfers. Each one converted it to "DX" format,
sent it through a serial line, and the remote system
converted the "DX" format to it's native format.
Usually it worked well, but sometimes it did odd things.
Every version of Word-??, DecWord-?? seemed to
use
very different file formats, so I'm not surprised that the
RX01 version is different from the RX50 version. But you
had to do a RX transfer to transport them, so they could
do a format conversion at the same time.
I believe that there is also a version of WPS for the Rainbow, called
WPS-16. IIRC, it had a conversion function from WPS-Plus RX-50
diskettes to WPS-16. And, if my memory isn't failing me, it wasn't a
DEC product.
4:55 p.m.
The Rainbow ran WPS-80 (CP/M) and there was a WPS-PC from Exceptional
Business Solutions. I don't think there was any DEC produced WPS-alike for
the Rainbow...
Exceptional Business Solutions doesn't show up on the web... I wish they
were available 'cause I'd love to convince them to Open Source the dead
product so I could try to get it running on Linux.
Bill
On 12/18/06, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 18 Dec 2006 at 13:36, Kevin Handy wrote:
Every version of Word-??, DecWord-?? seemed to
use
very different file formats, so I'm not surprised that the
RX01 version is different from the RX50 version. But you
had to do a RX transfer to transport them, so they could
do a format conversion at the same time.
I believe that there is also a version of WPS for the Rainbow, called
WPS-16. IIRC, it had a conversion function from WPS-Plus RX-50
diskettes to WPS-16. And, if my memory isn't failing me, it wasn't a
DEC product.
Cheers,
Chuck
11:10 p.m.
At 02:04 PM 12/18/2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 18 Dec 2006 at 11:41, Kevin Handy wrote:
If you've got a real PDP-8, there's a program I wrote called WPFLOP
that will convert those WPS-8 floppies to ASCII files. The disk layout
isn't bizarre given that the floppies have 128 byte sectors; the layout
allows you to pack 256 12-bit words into a single logical sector. My
byte-mode floppy handlers for OS/8 use this convention, as does
COS-310. OS/8 uses "12 bit mode" on the RX01, storing a single OS/8
block across four disk sectors, wasting a bunch of potential disk capacity.
Finding copies of these programs may be interesting. ;-)
-Rick
If you wanted to convert from WPS-8 to
WordPerfect, then I
could offer my code at http://srv.net/~kth .
I think that the internal format is "similiar" to Word-11, but
Word-11 didn't pack 3 characters into 2 12-bit words.
you might be able to use it as a basis for understanding the
format and writing your own conversion program, but
reverse engineering would still be required.
We must be looking at different versions of WPS 8. The version that
I have (on RX01 diskettes) packs 4 characters into 2 12-bit words,
but the disk storage layout is a bit bizarre (3 physical sectors with
data interleaved to produce a single logical sector) and there are
numerous "escape" codes for switching to upper/lower case, bold,
underline, ruler, etc.
2:50 p.m.
What's the difference between DEC/dx and the two below. Was DEC/dx just a
conversion format from WPS to Word11/WPS-Plus?
On 12/18/06, Kevin Handy <kth at srv.net> wrote:
Julian Wolfe wrote:
that
@Chuck
--- Off of Vax 750's and 780's They appear to be Word-11
and/or WPS All in One files, I can read the text, but its
Please note, Word-11 is not a DEC product, so they probably aren't in format. (Though if anyone has a copy for RSTS, or
knows where to get it,
please hook me up :)
I have copys of Word-11, and DecWord, on 800 BPI magtape,
but have no way to read them.
Word-11 was made by DPD, and DecWord was based on that.
The differences between the two are mostly just a version
difference. I think DecWord will read Word-11 files without
any problems.
If you wanted to convert from WPS-8 to WordPerfect, then I
could offer my code at http://srv.net/~kth .
I think that the internal format is "similiar" to Word-11, but
Word-11 didn't pack 3 characters into 2 12-bit words.
you might be able to use it as a basis for understanding the
format and writing your own conversion program, but
reverse engineering would still be required.
6402
days inactive
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15 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
curt＠atarimuseum.com -
fireflyst＠earthlink.net -
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
kth＠srv.net -
nico＠farumdata.dk -
pechter＠gmail.com -
rick＠rickmurphy.net -
tpeters＠mixcom.com