Ben I think you have the essence of a solution, using the Unix filter paradigm at user or driver level. Your desire to retain the original file format(s) is very sensible, it is always best to record "raw" data - for the greatest fidelity. The ISO 7-layer model provides a paradigm for data transport/storage formats and derived (presentation) formats. Good luck with the weather Martin
-----Original Message----- From: ben [mailto:bfranc...@jetnet.ab.ca] Sent: 01 January 2023 14:27 To: Martin Bishop <mjd.bis...@emeritus-solutions.com>; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: [cctalk] Re: How to print old files. On 2023-01-01 6:53 a.m., Martin Bishop wrote: > Folks - wishing all a Good New Year > > Ben > The first ingredient must be a printer with a a suitable font table, in these > times of soft fonts that should be a given or tractable. > The second element is to convert to and use an MCS / multibyte character > representation - which can differentiate _ ^ and the desired arrow marks. > To do this you could: > - load the file into an editor, save it in MCS format, perform the > necessary substitutions (two global replaces) > - write a program / script to achieve the same effect, read char and > convert/translate to MCS octets. > Note. It is just possible you will find a font with the arrows in the upper > 128 glyphs of 8 bit "ascii", in which case you can skip the MCS conversion. > HtH > > Martin A filter of some kind is needed. With the rise of emulators for old machines,I can see text being written with terminal emulation of the orginal i/o devices, but that leaves printing or tranfering text files a problem. JOE could have a REAL - big iron 67, SAM runs windows 2000, TOM has a micro VAX. Every thing gets dumped to the cloud. One must keep data as files, none of this crappy mess that this modern 'buy a app' to print,or read. How does one share binary and paper tape/cards as files? Ben. PS: Back to inventing big iron 67. tag line: Cloud computing delayed to to bad weather, server is under 3 feet of snow.
