DOS ain't dead

CHM would be ideal target for Arachne APM because it is just archived HTML files.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> CHM - does the CHM reader in FP IDE work now ?

Fine with FPC helpfiles. Some hardening was done in the meantime. Starting with the next release (say 1-2 months), there will be a CHM commandline compiler too.

> Any chance for a separate CHM reader without FP ?

Sure, since everything is open source.

But I'm not currently working on that, or planning to.

> Blame Ron with his DOCX converter

Sorry ! :)

> Missing information:
>
> RTF(M) - anyone has or knows technologies about reading those in DOS
> ?

Martha will switch RTF to HTM and back. Works OK.

> DOCX - please boast with your progress, Ron

Early days yet, but it IS working, and Glenn McCorkle has created a plug-in (APM) for Arachne.
Plug-in works very well, and should be kept up to date with each version of docx2htm.exe.
Still a lot of work to do, but simple .docx files are presented quite well.
Graphics, colours are still some way off.
http://www.ausreg.com/files/docx2htm.zip - For CL
http://www.ausreg.com/files/docx2htm.txt

> DOC - anyone except me dared to test AntiWorld in DOS ?

I have used Antiword in DOS - better than nothing by a long way. Page formatting is a bit hit and miss.

I also use Victor B. Wagner's CatDoc in DOS to display the text
portion of .DOC files... and it does .RTF as well! (So you might
want to update the Wiki.) Here's the link:

http://www.wagner.pp.ru/~vitus/software/catdoc/

It only does the text portion of the file and outputs it to
StdOut... so you need something to capture the output and page it
(like LIST). But that's the same as for AntiWord if viewing the
text output on the console.

The CatDoc package includes a couple of other MS Office tools as
well (convert Excel spreadsheets to comma-delimited, extract text
from PowerPoint files).

As far as my experience goes, CatDoc and AntiWord (and the others
i mentioned) each have their pluses and minuses... neither is
"perfect". And you have to set them up properly.

- Doug B.

P.S. Last CatDoc update was Feb 2006. Last AntiWord was Oct
2005. Both look frozen....

>
> Missing information:
>
> RTF(M) - anyone has or knows technologies about reading those in DOS ?


Here's another co-venture between Ron Clarke & me.

http://glennmcc.org/download/manpage.zip

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http://glennmcc.org/

> Again,
> RTFW
> , or, more likely,
> WRTFW
> this time
>
> I've been planning that page for 5 years, now, it's there, at least a
> priliminary version. Blame Ron with his DOCX converter (I'll test)
> and RayeR with his MUPDF port (tested, works) that the page came
> just now and it's that immature so far
>
> Missing information:
>
> RTF(M) - anyone has or knows technologies about reading those in DOS
...
> > DOC - anyone except me dared to test AntiWorld in DOS ? Format
> documentation: since what time, how good is it ? Anyone dared to study it
> ?
>
> About all the missing informatinos or if you find errors, please edit the
> page or let me know
I'd say you missed one or two things:
http://sites.google.com/site/vdeeditor/ (note that Google prefers the https, but http works fine).
Text editor with a little formatting (knows left/center/right/justify, bold, italic, underline, and one or two other things). It reads .doc as plain text, but can read (with formatting, AFAIK) Wordperfect 6 and write RTF, Wordperfect 3/4 and 5, and Wordstar.
I suspect that GNU Oleo could be ported (it's ncurses), but siag (used to be siag.nu) is probably the more relevant spreadsheet: it used to support DOS, tsiag (curses) still exists in the latest versions, it supports half a dozen spreadsheet formats from various programs (xls2csv and--IIRC--a similar tool for ODS were bundled at points). The homepage has lapsed now, though there should be plenty of old mirrors/archives (thanks to Debian/Redhat/...)

Download now: DCDOXODT.ZIP 1.4 MiB

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

Hey guys. I have been messing around with this stuff, for now I am using Antiword to check DOC as PDF (usually like to keep formatting). I would like to try docx2htm but I am unsure which DOS app to use to open the htm files afterwards. I suppose Arachne could be used to read, but in order to edit the file I suppose a different program is needed.
Other than that, I would like to have a program to create DOC or RTF files that could be opened in standard MS Word. So I can share files with others.
Thanks for any help guys :)

> Again,
> RTFW
> , or, more likely,
> WRTFW
> this time
>
> I've been planning that page for 5 years, now, it's there, at least a
> priliminary version. Blame Ron with his DOCX converter (I'll test)
> and RayeR with his MUPDF port (tested, works) that the page came
> just now and it's that immature so far
>
> Missing information:
>
> RTF(M) - anyone has or knows technologies about reading those in DOS
> ?
>
> CHM - does the CHM reader in FP IDE work now ? Any chance for a
> separate CHM reader without FP ? Laaca ? Marcov ?
>
> DOCX - please boast with your progress, Ron
>
> DOC - anyone except me dared to test AntiWorld in DOS ? Format
> documentation: since what time, how good is it ? Anyone dared to study it
> ?
>
> About all the missing informatinos or if you find errors, please edit the
> page or let me know