Date   : Wed, 12 Dec 1990 22:16:52 GMT
From   : cica!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!milo.mcs.anl.gov!sirius.mcs.anl.gov!winans@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (John Winans)
Subject: Need WordStar utility

In article <16529@s.ms.uky.edu> tindle@ms.uky.edu (Ken Tindle) writes:
>I'm using WordStar on an Osborne 1 along with Kermit, trying to program
>a microcomputer board I built using BASIC-52 (Intel).
>
>Files created with WordStar must contain some binary characters, which is
>ruining the "raw" upload of program code to the uC board.
>
>I need a real, flat ASCII file on disk- so is there easily available a
>utility to massage WordStar output?
>
>I suppose one could use PIP's Z option, and/or an MBASIC program- but I'll
>bet this is a problem others have already beaten.  True?

Hmmm...  I have NOT used word-scar in years, but I recall that if you use it
in "document mode" by selecting "open document file" on it's mail menu, it
will set the high order bits of the first (or was it the last) character in
wach string token (ie. word in a sentence.)  You can opt for opening your 
files in "non-document" mode and this will not happen, but you will see some
other differences like fixed tab sizes and so on.  I always used non-doc mode
when in word-scar when I was using it for this exact reason.  I think it is
safe to say that in non-doc mode, word-scar is like a full screen ed.

If you do not know what I am talking about, then either wordstar is not what it
was 10 years ago, or you have never run it w/o specifying a file name as the
file to edit.  Just run it w/o any perameters and you will get a menu that
includes "open doc file" and "open non-doc file".  I think there was also some
way to set it up so that non-doc was the default mode with some setup program
that it came with.

Hope that's it.


--
! John Winans                     Advanced Computing Research Facility  !
! winans@mcs.anl.gov              Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois !
!                                                                       !
!"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"-- Tom Waits  !