TYD*BYTS

PRO/FILE TO MSCRIPT

When you don’t know any better, anything might be possible. Operating on that theory I said, “Why not?”.

I loaded version 5 of Jack Doheny‘s Mscript and then stuck a tape in my recorder that contained a file saved by the cartridge version of Tom Wood‘s PRO/FILE. Using the BASIC operating system menus to 5: LOAD/SAVE, then 4: LOAD NEW TEXT, and giving the PRO/FILE filename when prompted by MSCRIPT for FILENAME, I attempted to load the PRO/FILE file into MSCRIPT. Imagine my surprise when it appeared to actually load into the computer! A quick trip to MSCRIPT showed that the file was indeed there. The only problem with it was in the control codes used by PRO/FILE. A simple modification solved the problem.

I added these lines to the end of my version of MSCRIPT:

1000 FOR i=S TO S+LN: IF PEEK I=42 OR PEEK I=1 THEN POKE I,13
1010 NEXT I: GO TO 600

From BASIC I issued a GO TO 1000 command which re-formatted the PRO/FILE data for MSCRIPT usage. Once back in MSCRIPT, all I had to do was rearrange the file as I wanted it to appear.

Afterwards, I decided to make the changes a permanent part of my version of MSCRIPT. Along with lines 1000 and 1010 mentioned above, I made the following additions and changes and saved them to my permanent copy of MSCRIPT:

LINE 600: add “6: FORMAT PRO/FILE file”

LINE 610: change K$>5 to K$>6

Add line 613 IF K$=”6″ THEN GO TO 1000

LINE 1000: change GO TO 600 to GO TO 50

Try this to see if it will work with your versions of MSCRIPT and PRO/FILE. It makes these two fine programs even better.