WPS Files into Modern Wordprocessor

[Kevin Handy]

Chuck Guzis wrote:

>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.
>  
>
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.