Any "Telewriter-To-Text" conversion tool around?

[snarkhunter]

Hello all,

Well, today's issue is quite straightforward and perfectly described in the above title!
I do have some text documents that are currently only available as "Telewriter" files, and I would have liked to transfer them to PC text files (any format would be fine). Do you know if there is any simple way of achieving this that will not involve manually entering the whole data from scratch again?!

[Edit]
Ok, I guess using the " -lp-file" option should be fine. But now, I'm trying to understand what the emulated <CLEAR> is on a standard PC keyboard. I already found that PC's <Esc> is <BREAK>, but I'm still trying to figure out what

"That said, they are different, so some compromises need to be made: Escape is mapped to the Dragon’s BREAK key and ‘ (grave / back-tick) maps to the Dragon’s CLEAR key."

actually means ! (... sorry, but this merely sounds like Chinese to me !)

[sixxie]

It's the "apostrophe in the other direction" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_accent hit that key on your PC keyboard, it should map to Clear.

And yeah, -lp-file should do it - the file might need some tidying afterwards if it uses any printer control codes...

[snarkhunter]

Thanks for the confirmation about the "`" key. But then I just cannot see how this may ever work!

The standard key combination to have this accent displayed is Ctrl + Alt + 7. Then you have to press <Space> for the actual display. But how can this be achieved while also hitting the actual "command" letter (such as P for "jump to next Page") ? Once you hit <Space>, you're no longer in "special character entry" mode...

Could you please clearly explain what sequence of key strokes I should use in order to have the current text in TW output to a PC text file?

[sixxie]

I think we've hit an assumption about keyboards. On a UK or US keyboard, the backtick is easily accessible... Ah well, I never liked the fact it was hard coded anyway. Time to make the key bindings more configurable!

In the meantime, if you can pick a key you'd prefer to use, I can probably tweak the code and kick off a snapshot build to tide you over. French keyboard? Checking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_France.svg, that ^2 key looks reasonable, though I wouldn't know the SDL keysym for it. How about I just map an F-key for the time being? Are they available unshifted on French keyboards?

Edit: Ok, determined the keysym, there's a w32 build here with ^2 mapped to Clear - as a hack.

[snarkhunter]

Edit: Ok, determined the keysym, there's a w32 build here with ^2 mapped to Clear - as a hack.

Thank you (very much!) for your quick and kind efforts here!
But... what do you call "^2"

Otherwise, I work on a portable PC, thus having all F1-F12 keys available as well (i.e. unshifted, that is).

[sixxie]

In the French keyboard layout, there appeared to be a key where I would expect Escape to be (i.e., next to '&'/'1') labelled with a superscript 2 ("squared"). That one!

[snarkhunter]

In the French keyboard layout, there appeared to be a key where I would expect Escape to be (i.e., next to '&'/'1') labelled with a superscript 2 ("squared"). That one!

Yes, you're indeed absolutely right!
But you may be surprised to learn that, although I can see that key on my keyboard, I had never noticed it until now! And I really mean never-ever. Maybe it's because I do not have the slightest idea what it is supposed to be there for...

So, yes, that would would definitely be a good choice in my opinion.

[sixxie]

Reminds me of the first time I tried to find the '#' key on a mac UK keyboard (not the same as a normal keyboard). Such a common character to type, and yet they not only make it a weird meta combination, they don't even label it.

Edit: FWIW, the correct keyboard layout (yeah yeah, I know) is US Unix with double quotes swapped with '@' (so double quotes are on Shift+2, as they were on all machines in the 80s). So actually nobody makes a proper keyboard, by my reckoning...

[snarkhunter]

... Why wait any longer for things that are available already?!

I tried that special version of XRoar again, and it worked like a charm! This means I could actually use some of Telewriter functions requiring a <CLEAR> + other key combination using that funny PC keyboard "2" key. That, along with the ".txt" file output option, made it possible for me to generate a pseudo-printed copy of the instructions.

Now, it will only take a little extra work to make it anything useable. I'm currently in the process of editing everything, then will generate a new document as a "Word" file, which will also make it possible to include the icon pictures, just like in the original printed instruction booklet.

I will try to make this available here in the near future.

Thank you very much for your help, once again.