TOPIC -----------------------------------------
A customer wants to transfer (word processing) files from an Altos, running
Altos Office Management System, to a Macintosh for page composition.
DISCUSSION ------------------------------------
The Altos Office Management System runs under the Xenix operating system,
Microsoft's variation on UNIX. Xenix and UNIX store all data and
applications in the same type of file. This file type may contain any ASCII
value from 0 to 255. If the word processor can save a plain ASCII text
file, Macintosh can accept the file with little work. However, if the word
processor only creates files that also contain Control, Escape, or extended
characters, these additional characters need to be removed before Macintosh
can make use of the data in the file.
If the file does contain Control, Escape, or extended characters, a filter
or translation program is needed to extract the plain text characters stored
in the file. This can be accomplished on the Altos side or the Macintosh
side. On the Xenix side, "sed" (the stream editor) can be used to change or
eliminate unwanted characters. Also, on Xenix, the "strings" command can be
used to extract only printable ASCII characters from a file. On the
Macintosh side, utilities, like Vantage (McSink), can strip unwanted control
characters from the file.
Moving either of these files to the Macintosh is relatively simple. Using a
serial connection (direct serial port-to-serial port or two modems), the
file can be moved with a standard file transfer protocol, like Kermit. You
can also have Xenix "stream" or "print" the file to a serial port. If the
Macintosh is set up to capture the data coming from the Altos serial port,
the captured data can then be copied and pasted from the capture buffer. A
capture buffer is provided in MacTerminal by selecting the Record Lines Off
Top under the Commands menu.