Undocumented Freestanding Use of Word-4-Word Text Conversion Filters

How to Convert XyWrite 3(+), XyWrite 4-DOS, or XyWin Documents to Microsoft Word v6|v7|v8 [97]|v9 [v2000]|v10 [v2002]

The Satisfaction-Guaranteed “DOS-Only” Method

Preliminary:

The W4W filters packaged with Xy4-DOS may be used in standalone fashion, executed from DOS. XyWrite 4 need not be loaded or used. The original 1992-vintage filters used to be downloadable from the dial-in TTG Bulletin Board System, but TTG went out of business in September 2001. Until 2000, a selection of more recent (circa 1996) filters was available from an Hungarian institutional server, but those links are now dead (many users have them all, however). Almost all of these filters, both original and “Hungarian”, are presently available from www.xywrite.com. The filters work equally well with XyWrite 3(+), XyWrite 4 for DOS, or XyWin; NBWin works also, but high-order characters (>127) translate incorrectly, because NBWin uses Codepage 1252 (ANSI) whereas XyWrite uses CodePages 437 (US-Ascii) and 850 (Latin 1).

A powerful reason to use the standalone DOS-only method of conversion is that there is often not enough memory available to DOS to perform conversions when XyWrite is loaded in the same DOS session. The “Save As” method of exporting text to other formats, using XyWrite's internal Menus, is fundamentally unreliable and should NOT be used.

Moveover, when using the DOS-only method of conversion, described below, do not shell from XyWrite to DOS. Instead, open a fresh DOS session (if you are using true MS-DOS, then you must close XyWrite first, to liberate the memory it is using; in other operating systems, all you need to do is open a fresh new DOS session from the Desktop).

File format conversions may be performed between any of the following formats:

If you don't know the format of a particular filter, e.g. W4W48T.EXE, just command “w4w48t ?<cr>”. The module responds “Word Perfect 6.0”.

The general conversion procedure involves a two stage process (rather like the “hub” concept employed by airlines, where all passengers are flown from their point of departure to Memphis, and then from Memphis to their destination). Stage 1 converts From each source (e.g. XyWrite) format into a standardized, temporary intermediate format; all “From” filters (filenamed W4W##F.EXE) convert to one intermediate file (named W4W99INT.TMP). In Stage 2, all “To” filters (filenamed W4W##T.EXE) convert from the standard format To the target format. The conversion executables are sensitized to source and target format versions, e.g. XyWrite 3, 4, or XyWin, by means of user-supplied “/V#” switches, e.g. “/V1” for XyWrite 3(+).

Wrinkle:
The filters will NOT overwrite an existing target filename. So erase any existing file of the intended target name before starting conversion.

If the following procedure does NOT work for you, then try it with the CONVTEST.XY document, which DOES work! It has a Running Header/Footer, a couple of high Ascii characters, some underlines. If that works, but your document does NOT work, then you need to start removing or altering formats from your document, which is probably what's causing trouble. These filters are very robust, however, and most conversions are highly satisfactory.

Procedure:

This procedure will work for XyWrite 3, XyWrite 4, and XyWin documents. Forget XyWrite's “Save As” procedure; we're going to convert from the DOS command line ONLY.

You may wish to increase DOS's “FILES=##” spec to 99, because behind the scenes conversion creates, and then deletes, dozens of temporary files.

You need conversion filters of the same vintage. If you have the newer Hungarian files, they are vastly preferable: 

W4W17F.EXE   81965  5-14-96   3:14pm
W4W17T.EXE   73067  5-14-96   3:16pm
W4W49F.EXE  187001  8-19-96  12:37pm
W4W49T.EXE  157029  8-19-96  12:45pm

Place the EXEcutable files into your filters directory (usually \XY4\FILTERS\), overwriting any older *.EXE files of the same name that exist there now. Compare the dates/filesizes. All filters used in one particular conversion should be of roughly the same vintage (don't convert using XyWrite FROM filters dated 1992 and MSWord TO filters dated 1996). The “Hungarian” XyWrite files belong to MasterSoft filter version 7.2.101; whereas the “Hungarian” MSWord files are v7.3.108 (7.3 was apparently the last “Converter Code” produced by Adobe/MasterSoft, before they abandoned this product).

SUPPOSE that your source (XyWrite) file is MYXY.XY
SUPPOSE that your target (MSWord) file will be MYWORD.DOC
Make sure that MYWORD.DOC doesn't already exist in the current directory! DELETE it if it exists (ironically, the forthcoming conversion won't succeed, but the existing file will be trashed anyway).

Open a fresh session of DOS. Do NOT shell out from XyWrite. You want to have all available DOS memory devoted to conversion. You might wish to run “MEM /C” from DOS before beginning, to ensure that you have a full deck of memory — at least 550Kb free.

Go to the command line. ChDir to your XyWrite FILTERS directory.

Issue the following two commands, replacing the dummy filenames mentioned above and below with your actual filename:

W4W17F.EXE [d:\path\]MYXY.XY /N /V2

WAIT for this command to finish! It creates many files, and the program needs a second or two to erase all but one of them (W4W99INT.TMP) before you continue. Now create your new target (converted) file:

If using the “Hungarian” MSWord v6.0 filter:
W4W49T.EXE [d:\path\]MYWORD.DOC /N /V0

If using the older Word for DOS v5.0 filter:
W4W05T.EXE [d:\path\]MYWORD.DOC /N /V2
Additional conversion to Word 97/2000 may be necessary, e.g. see the free Conversion Filters from Microsoft

If using the older Word for Windows v2.0 filter:
W4W44T.EXE [d:\path\]MYWORD.DOC /N /V1

Intermediate file W4W99INT.TMP will be automatically deleted.

“Open” your newly-converted file MYWORD.DOC in MSWord. Be sure to select the correct file type in the “Files of type” box at the bottom of the “Open file” dialog.

Notes:

If you have an extra page in the converted DOC (at the end)...
it is caused by lines that contain no text at the end of your source document. For example, a «PG» command, appearing on the last line but unaccompanied by any printed text, will generate an extra page. So will a lone carriage return.

There are a whole bunch of free filters for MSWord (to/from other Word versions and WPs) at Microsoft's MSWord web site. You may need these for conversion of Word for DOS files, e.g. the Converter Pack for Word 2000.

Other sample conversion commands:

Suppose you want to Import from Microsoft Word for Windows v6|v7|v8|v2000|v2002 to XyWrite 4-DOS or XyWin. First “Save As” the DOCument in “Word 6.0/95” format, by selecting this format in the “Save as type” box at the bottom of Word's “Save As” dialog. It is very important that you save in Word v6.0 format; otherwise your source document won't convert (ignore any cautionary message about Word formatting that “might be lost” during conversion to v6.0). Then issue this command from DOS, to create an intermediate temp file:

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W4W49F.EXE MSWord_source_filename /N /V0
  and finally generate a XyWrite result:
W4W17T.EXE XyWrite_target_filename /N /V2
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Export from Xy3+ to Microsoft's Rich Text Format:

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W4W17F.EXE ThreePlus_source_filename /N /V1
  then generate a Rich Text Format result in the Latin-1 (CodePage 850) charset:
W4W19T.EXE RTF_target_filename /N /V0pa
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If you want to Import to Xy3+, simply flip the process. Note that Xy4 plays no part in this conversion.

Another example: Convert Word Perfect v5.0 documents to Word for Windows v5.5 format:

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W4W07F.EXE WP5.0_source_filename /N /V0
  then issue:
W4W05T.EXE MSWord5.5_target_filename /N /V2
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(RJH LastRev.9.March.2003)