PC character graphics in the modern world
Lee Hart
know, the smiley face, lines, etc.). They were created and edited with
several text editors, any of which allowed you to enter these characters
by pressing the ALT key and typing their number on the keypad.
On my old XT, I can view them from the DOS prompt with just "TYPE
FILENAME". And, I can print them on my old dot matrix printer by just
sending them to it as-is.
But, how do you view, edit, or print such files on today's computers?
When I try loading or printing them with Word or any of the Windows
editors, the IBM graphics get converted to various foreign characters.
--
Lee A. Hart Ring the bells that still can ring
814 8th Ave. N. Forget your perfect offering
Sartell, MN 56377 USA There is a crack in everything
leeahart_at_earthlink.net That's how the light gets in - Leonard Cohen
Henry Churchyard
Lee Hart <leea...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I have some old "picture" files that use PC graphic characters (you
> know, the smiley face, lines, etc.). They were created and edited
> with several text editors, any of which allowed you to enter these
> characters by pressing the ALT key and typing their number on the
> keypad. On my old XT, I can view them from the DOS prompt with just
> "TYPE FILENAME". And, I can print them on my old dot matrix printer
> by just sending them to it as-is. But, how do you view, edit, or
> print such files on today's computers? When I try loading or
> printing them with Word or any of the Windows editors, the IBM
> graphics get converted to various foreign characters.
For viewing Code Page 437 boxing and fill characters, you can get the
LineDraw font from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/gc0651.exe
(a DOS self-extracting .ZIP file), but the smiley-faces are below-32
characters, and couldn't be displayed in Windows without some kind of
document conversion. Why not just open a DOS box on your Windows
system, and type the file there?
--%!PS
10 10 scale/M{rmoveto}def/R{rlineto}def 12 45 moveto 0 5 R 4 -1 M 5.5 0 R
currentpoint 3 sub 3 90 0 arcn 0 -6 R 7.54 10.28 M 2.7067 -9.28 R -5.6333
2 setlinewidth 0 R 9.8867 8 M 7 0 R 0 -9 R -6 4 M 0 -4 R stroke showpage
% Henry Churchyard chu...@usa.net http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/
Lee Hart
> For viewing Code Page 437 boxing and fill characters, you can get the
> LineDraw font from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/gc0651.exe
> (a DOS self-extracting .ZIP file), but the smiley-faces are below-32
> characters, and couldn't be displayed in Windows without some kind of
> document conversion. Why not just open a DOS box on your Windows
> system, and type the file there?
What I have are circuit diagrams drawn with PC graphics. I want to send
them to others so they can view them. But most people's machines aren't
set up to open a DOS window to display text; their email program just
displays it as received, but with all the graphic characters replaced
with foreign characters. Thus from their perspective, the problem is on
"my" end.
Henry Churchyard
>> For viewing Code Page 437 boxing and fill characters, you can get
>> the LineDraw font from
>> ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/gc0651.exe (a DOS
>> self-extracting .ZIP file), but the smiley-faces are below-32
>> characters, and couldn't be displayed in Windows without some kind
>> of document conversion. Why not just open a DOS box on your
>> Windows system, and type the file there?
> What I have are circuit diagrams drawn with PC graphics. I want to
> send them to others so they can view them. But most people's
> machines aren't set up to open a DOS window to display text; their
> email program just displays it as received, but with all the graphic
> characters replaced with foreign characters. Thus from their
> perspective, the problem is on "my" end.
Then convert the text files to GIF images; if this was done the right
way (with foreground text dithered in 8 or less colors against an
*UN*dithered solid-color background), then the GIFs would be pretty
small in filesize...
Lee Hart
>> What I have are circuit diagrams drawn with PC graphics. I want to
>> send them to others so they can view them. But most people's
>> machines aren't set up to open a DOS window to display text; their
>> email program just displays it as received, but with all the graphic
>> characters replaced with foreign characters. Thus from their
>> perspective, the problem is on "my" end.
>
> Then convert the text files to GIF images; if this was done the right
> way (with foreground text dithered in 8 or less colors against an
> *UN*dithered solid-color background), then the GIFs would be pretty
> small in filesize...
How do you do this?