Re: 8-bit Appleworks files

["Terry & Utahna" <tolsen64@hotmail.com>]

Is there a description of the format of an awp file?  Sounds like a good
idea for a vb6 project...


"David Empson" <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote in message
1exj1gm.wm065c19vm1foN%dempson@actrix.gen.nz">news:1exj1gm.wm065c19vm1foN%dempson@actrix.gen.nz...
> <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.