Re: 8-bit Appleworks files

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

<penman-no-spam@cotse.com> wrote:

> Actually, AppleWorks WP files ARE text files--except that they
> contain control characters that the program interprets to
> do special functions such as underline, boldface, etc.

There is more to it than that.  A "text file" means that the file
contains mostly ASCII text with standard control characters  such as
carriage return to mark line breaks.  This is not a valid description of
an AppleWorks WP file.

It does indeed contain text, but so do a lot of other word processor
file formats (e.g. MS Word and WordPerfect), and I wouldn't call them
"text files" either.

In the case of AppleWorks WP files, there is a large binary header, and
each line is defined as a record with a binary header, followed by the
text from the line with embedded control characters.  The text at least
appears in the right order, but manually fixing the line breaks is a
tedious process.