Date   : Thu, 13 Dec 1990 14:23:28 GMT
From   : tindle@g.ms.uky.edu (Ken Tindle)
Subject: Need WordStar utility

In article <699@organpipe.UUCP> tom@afthree.as.arizona.edu (Thomas J. Trebisky)
writes:
>The thing to do (perhaps you know this) is to run wordstar in
>non-document mode - then you read and write plain old ascii files and
>all is well.  

Even in non-document mode, WordStar will set the high bit of the character
the cursor is on at the time of the disk save.  It's entirely too nervous
for my application, unless the output is filtered through an external utility.

>Just talked to my CPM guru nextdoor and he says to write a simple
>filter that does this - 
>Read the file byte by byte.
>Force the high bit in every byte to zero on every byte read.
>Delete every byte that is < 0x20 (blank) and that is
>not 0x09, 0x0a, 0x0c, 0r 0x0d  (tab,newline,formfeed,return).

Now that is good advice-

too bad the original authors of WordStar were too brain-dead re:ascii files.
There's no reason they couldn't have built this code into the program- except
nobody's perfect; I guess they didn't think of it?  I dunno, except they do
massage the file for video display, just not to disk.  Not too bright. 

INTERNET:tindle@ms.uky.edu | "Could you please continue the petty bickering?
BITNET: tindle@ukma.bitnet |  I find it most intriguing."   ---    Data, 
Ken Tindle - Lexington, KY |  Star Trek, The Next Generation, "Haven"