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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-vaxine!fitzpatrick
From: fitzpatrick@vaxine.DEC
Newsgroups: net.micro.apple
Subject: re: EXEC Maker programs
Message-ID: <1412@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 13:23:06 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1412
Posted: Thu Feb 27 13:23:06 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 02:36:46 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.DEC.COM
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 53


Well, it looks like Sean already did all the work I was planning to do.  
Now this means I'm going to have to take all my cute little utilities and 
clean them up so that someone other than myself can deal with them.

Regarding EXEC files, Sean wrote:

>... It is important I believe to load the text files into a 
>wordprocessor and save them before trying to exec them.  I tried to 
>anyway with the DOS Kermit, and all I got were errors untill I did this.  
>...
>
>Sean Kamath
 

Keep in mind that DOS 3.3 deals with text in negative (or "high") ASCII, 
that is all the bytes have the high bit set.  Most of the rest of the 
world (including ProDOS and Aztec C) use positive (or "low") ASCII.  If 
you try to EXEC a file that is low ASCII, DOS will see it as garbage.  To 
get around this, in Kermit-65 SET FILE-BYTE-SIZE SEVEN-BIT before doing 
the download.  Kermit (on the Apple) is designed to set the high bit on 
text transfers when in seven-bit mode.  In eight-bit mode, it saves the 
bytes as received.  

I ran into the opposite problem when downloading C sources with ASCII 
Express and then trying to use them in the Aztec C VED editor.  It spits 
up at hi ASCII, because it can't recognize the EOL characters.  I 
eventually intend to make VED itself insensitive to this (I'm currently 
working on some other enhancements to it now) but in the mean time wrote 
a little utility called hitolo to strip hi bits.  I only have a version 
to run under the Aztec shell, but could build a stand-alone version in 
short order if anyone is interested in it.
 
re: Sean's one-liner to make a text file of a BASIC program

I don't believe the POKE 33,33 is correct.  This will set the screen 
width to 33 columns (which is what you want to do if you have to retrace a 
line in an Applesoft program and don't want to get a lot of extra spaces 
in a PRINT statement that spans two lines).  What Applesoft will do in 
this case is issue a <CR> (which will go into the text file being 
written) after 33 columns of a line are listed.  You need to POKE 33 with 
a big number (bigger than the # of chars in the longest line of your 
program) or the resulting file will not EXEC properly.  Be sure also to 
issue a NOMON O command to DOS to prevent the overly long lines from 
going to the screen or you could end up clobbering all sorts of memory.


Dave FitzPatrick
 
        ...decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-vaxine!fitzpatrick
 
        on BIX: B-mail to dave.f
                        (co-moderator, leisure conference)