impossible support task? converting locoscript doc

geeza

geeza

geeza

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Ok, ive been given the (maybe impossible) task of converting a locoscript document to a word document. Ive come upon this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LocoScript amongst other that you can pay to convert your documents with. The thing is they dont know what version of locoscript they use so I wouldnt be sure that a pay option would even be any good (because some cannot convert pro versions etc)

With the output text of the free converter its totally unformatted and looks like this

File header:


DOC TECHNICAL PLOT - MASQ Last amended: 13.6.9` 6T X&?` 0 !x 0 TECHPLOT.MAS Star LC-10 Courier c @ @@ @ x P x " " " " "( P "mm x x ""m *9Oal Script 1: ` g "mm x x ""m *9Oal Script 1: ` D "mm x x %%e )AY;E Script 1: 1 "mm Z x %%e )AY;E Script 1: 2 "|| x x &&q Layout 4 "mm x x ""q *9>CMYp Script 1: 4 "|| x x &&q Layout 6 "||

with loads more stuff like this. Does anyone know a way of converting an old locoscript document to something readable because its for an Opera show from 1995 and they have lost the paper hard copies.


Thanks
 
It all really depends on how much effort you're prepared to go to ;)
The personal route I would take is to try loading the file up in the DOS variant first (I'm assuming that this is probably the originator) via DOSBox and copying/ pasting out.
In theory anyway, this should work, depends :)

Also, if you have a working version of Locoscript available, it should be possible to save the file in ASCII, but this is going to remove any custom formatting.

Post the file in question & if not me, someone should be able to help further.

If you want to pay for a conversion service, then I would strongly avise making exact RAW copies of the disks (Plenty of Windows/ *NIX utils available).

-Leezer-
 
Last edited:
leezer3 said:
It all really depends on how much effort you're prepared to go to ;)
The personal route I would take is to try loading the file up in the DOS variant first (I'm assuming that this is probably the originator) via DOSBox and copying/ pasting out.
In theory anyway, this should work, depends :)

-Leezer-
Click to expand...

thanks, i tried this is command prompt 'edit techplot' and it opened with a load of rubbish. Why would dosbox be able to open the file anyway, dos is just an operating system not a program?

Would it open up different in DOSbox as to usual command prompt?
 
What I'm saying is to use DOSBox to run the DOS version of LocoScript & then copy + paste from there, as I was assuming you probably had the original program that its written on around somewhere. (Normal command prompt will almost certainly throw a fit with proggies of this vintage)

Original post was probably not as clear as it might be; LocoScript should also allow you to save the file in ASCLII (Plain text), and this was my suggested second route- Not reccomended except in a pinch as you're gonna loose the formatting such as bold.

-Leezer-
 
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