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From: drick@ucb-vax.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Wordstar Question
Message-ID: <8530@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 23-Feb-85 11:03:39 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.8530
Posted: Sat Feb 23 11:03:39 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Feb-85 05:31:16 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 32

concerning WordStar files:

If you use document mode, tabs are immediately expanded into spaces.
That's probably why you can't find them w/ search&replace.  In
non-document mode, WordStar leaves the tabs alone.

Some other WordStar stuff I think I remember:

The last letter of each word has the high bit set.  "Soft" carriage
returns are different than those you enter yourself, but I forget how.
Might be the high bit.  Soft spaces have the high bit set.  Soft
hyphens are actually SOH or something equally strange.

All this is easily verified by looking at a representative WordStar
file with a debugger.

You can avoid most of this nonsense by using WordStar's non-document
mode.  If you're running WordStar under a CP/M family operating
system, here's one way to get an ASCII file:

1.  Delete all print controls like ^B.
2.  Turn right justify off and reformat everything.
3.  "Print" the document to disk with page formatting and
    form feeds turned off.
4.  Copy the resulting file using PIP with the [Z] option
    to zero the high bits.

One of these days I'll write a little filter in C to do this
translation...

David L. Rick
...hplabs!hplvla!hplvle!drick