News on the TSFILT filters package by Timo Salmi in reverse order
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University of Vaasa, Finland, Linux Pentium garbo.uwasa.fi has a
large collection of Shareware, Freeware and Public Domain PC
programs available by anonymous FTP, WWW (World Wide Web) and mail
server. The file ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/0news-ts contains news
about the TS-programs in the /pc/ts directory (in reverse order).
This text, which you now have, is an extract from the 0news-ts file
and the Usenet news.

....................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi   Co-moderator of news:comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at ftp:// & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/ archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance  ; University of Vaasa
mailto:ts@uwasa.fi <http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/>  ; FIN-65101,  Finland
....................................................................
Spam foiling in effect.  My email filter autoresponder will return a
required email password to users not yet in the privileges database.
Advice on spam foiling at http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/spamfoil.html
Digital photos collection at http://www.uwasa.fi/ktt/lasktoim/photo/
....................................................................

Thu 11-Dec-2003: I have updated
 IBM2LAT1.EXE IBM PC Scandies to Latin1 chars
and added
 LAT12IBM.EXE Latin1 IBM chars to PC Scandies
The files are for corverting text files between the ISO-8859-1
Latin1 and the IBM character sets. Used a more comprehensive
conversion table incrasing the number of transformations from just
the Scandies 6 to the more genral 34.

Tue 7-Sep-99: I updated a couple of days ago my first collection of
text filters to take care of the fast machine RTE 200 bug problem.
Unfortunately I missed two programs in the package
 LOGFILT.EXE Filters backspaces from logfiles
 TOIBM.EXE 7 ascii to Scandinavian 8bit ibm
My thanks to Lars Wigrell for detecting this. I have made a new
update
 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsfilt24.zip
 Programs for filtering messages, log files, Unix-PC, etc.

Sun 5-Sep-99: I have made an update
 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsfilt23.zip
 Programs for filtering messages, log files, Unix-PC, etc.
- PCs faster than 200Mhz have brought along a new problem with some
  old programs. Turbo Pascal's Crt screen handling ceases to work
  because of a "divide by 0" initialization error. The update
  hopefully remedies the situation for these programs. I have not
  been able, however, to test this since I only have sub-200Mhz PCs
  available. On the other hand, I have not had any reports of
  problems with the fix, which as been around for some time now for
  my other programs.
- Updated some address information.

Sat 1-Apr-95: I have updated my collection of text file filters to
be
 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsfilt21.zip
 Programs for filtering messages, log files, Unix-PC, etc.
I added the following filter
 "IBM2LAT1.EXE IBM PC Scandinavian to Latin1 characters".
The need for this filter arose from the Finnish computer centres'
decision to use the 8-bit Latin1 character set which is different
from the customary 8-bit IBM PC character set. For example the
conversion is necessary when I print PC text with characters like a"
and o" etc on the PostScript printer in our local net.

Fri 11-Feb-94: If anything can go wrong, it will. I recently
released updates of my filters, but unfortunately several bugs were
still found. In particular my thanks to Dave Kapalko
medik@attme.att.com Hence update garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsfilt21.zip.
- Corrected the /k keep date option. It did not work at all in
  LOGFILT "Filters backspaces from logfiles"
- It refused process backspaces. Corrected that.

Sun 23-Jan-94: I have updated my filters for text files to be
garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsfilt20.zip by adding a /f switch (force
overwrite if source = destination) to the following individual
programs. My thanks to Antti Virjo avirjo@tays.fi for the
suggestion.
  LOGFILT.EXE "Filters backspaces from logfiles"
  TOASC.EXE   "8bit ibm to Scandinavian 7 ascii"
  TOASCI.EXE  "8bit ibm to International 7ascii"
  TOIBM.EXE   "7 ascii to Scandinavian 8bit ibm"
The first of these has become somewhat obsolete in the sense that
modems now tend to be error-correcting.

Wed 29-Jan-92: I have updated to garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsfilt19.zip.
It is a collection of filters for text files. Among others it
includes programs for converting text files from 8-bit ascii to
7-bit ascii with Scandinavian conventions. The programs are
TOASC.EXE and TOASCI.EXE. There is also a Scandinavian conversion
TOIBM.EXE from 7-bit ascii to 8-bit ascii. The fourth update is
LOGFILT.EXE to filter noise from telecommunication log files. These
programs have now the following enhancements:
- A new optional keep switch (/k) to make the date/time stamp of the
  destination file the same as that of the source text file.
- To allow the source text file and the destination file be the
  same. In other words the programs can now make the conversion
  without forcing you to produce new files with names different from
  the original.
- The programs first test whether the source file is a proper text
  file with MS-DOS #13#10 eolns, no special characters (#0..#6, #8,
  #11, #14..#25, #28..#31), and no lines exceeding 254 characters in
  length. If not the conversion will not be attempted.
Some examples of the current usages:
 TOASC MyText.txt /k                     ( -> },  -> |, etc)
 TOASC MyText.txt conv.txt
 TOASC MyText con /m

Fri 18-Oct-91: I have updated my filters for converting Unix <-->
MS-DOS text files. As you know, Unix text files use ascii 10 as
eolns (end of lines), while MS-DOS text files use the ascii 13 10
pair. PC2UNIX.EXE and UNIX2PC.EXE filters in the updated
     garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsfilt18.arc
can be used to convert the eolns. I have added a /t test switch for
batch programming to both the filters. When the switch is on, the
filters return errorlevel==0 if the file redirected to the filter is
a text file. Else it returns errorlevel==1.
   I have added a U2PC.BAT batch which utilizes this feature. The
purpose of the U2PC.BAT batch is to convert the original Unix text
file into an MS-DOS text file, and preserve the date/time stamp of
the file in converting it. To use it you'll need my TOUCH.EXE
program from garbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/ts/tsutlb19.arc (note that earlier
versions won't do). You also must have at least MS-DOS version 3.30.
   In fact I wrote this batch for my own needs, but decided to make
it publicly available, too. The background is this. I have been
transferring also text files from my hosts (chyde and garbo) via a
modem connection to my home PC.  To make the transfer more efficient
I have used .arc compression first. This choice is because .arc can
correctly handle the the Unix <-> PC eoln conversion, while the
current .zip and .zoo do not have this feature. However, because of
its better efficiency I want to use .zip packing to transfer the
text files. But I also want to preserve the original date/time
stamps of the files when I do the eoln conversion on my PC after
unpacking the relevant .zip file, so I wrote this batch for this
purpose.
   Furthermore, there is a new UNZIPTXT.BAT batch which unzips a zip
file and converts the found Unix text files into MS-DOS text files
while preserving the date/time stamps intact.
   Incidentally, if you find U2PC.BAT and UNZIPTXT.BAT instructive,
there is plenty more in /pc/ts/tsbat27.arc.

Tue 21-May-91: I have programmed three sets of various MS-DOS
filters, and now updated the first set to be /pc/ts/tsfile17.arc. In
general, the true (Unix-type) filters are written to rely on pipes
and/or redirection. A common practical problem with these filters is
that if you type the filter name all by itself, you appear to be
stuck. In actual fact the filter is just expecting input from the
console. The remedy to this problem is to program the filter in a
way that it senses whether it is getting piped (or redirected)
input. If it is not, then instead of filtering, the call to the
filter should give the instructions. As an example consider the
filter UNIX2PC which converts Unix eolns (end of lines) to PC eolns
(useful if you transfer Unix text files to your PC). The common
syntax using pipe and redirection is
          TYPE UNIX.TXT | UNIX2PC > PC.TXT
What I have done is to reprogram UNIX2PC in such a way that if you
write alone
          UNIX2PC
this call will give you the instructions, instead of waiting for
input from the console to the filter. Technically speaking this is
achieved by a program code which detects where the input comes from,
and acts accordingly. The idea for using this redirection detection
code comes from an article in the PC Magazine, April 16, 1991, p.
374. (This does not work for MS-DOS versions earlier than 2.00).
   I have included this feature in the following of the filters in
the updated tsfilt17.arc package:
          PC2UNIX.EXE     PC text eolns to Unix eolns
          UNIX2PC.EXE     Unix text eolns to PC eolns
          ASC2IBM.EXE     7 ascii to Scandinavian 8bit ibm
          IBM2ASC.EXE     8bit ibm to Scandinavian 7 ascii
The input and output of also ASC2IBM.EXE and IBM2ASC.EXE has not
been buffered for faster disk access (in other words these filters
kind of have a cache of their own).
   The following edited extract from my Frequently Asked Questions
is also of interest here:
23. *****
 Q: Where can I find compress for MS-DOS to handle .Z files?
 A: Unix has compress, uncompress and zcat programs to pack or
unpack files which are given the .Z extension. These files can also
be handled under MS-DOS using for example /pc/unix/comp430d.zip,
which is available from anonymous FTP sites like garbo.uwasa.fi,
SIMTEL20, etc.
   There is one useful trick if you uncompress on MS-DOS such text
files that have been made on Unix with compress. Unix and MS-DOS
have different eolns (end of lines). You can extract a Unix
compressed text file as follows
      comp430d -d -c YourZFile | unix2pc > YourOutputFile
where unix2pc.exe is taken from /pc/ts/tsfilt17.arc (or whatever is
the current version number).


28-Aug-89: TSFILT16.ARC has the following enhancements:

- ASC2IBM.EXE and IBM2ASC.EXE have been added. These are filters for
  Scandinavian conversions of 8-bit <--> 7-bit characters. They
  perform a similar function as TOIBM.EXE and TOASC.EXE. The
  difference is that the latter are programs taking the files as
  parameters, while the new programs are filters, which can be used
  in pipes. The background of these two new filter is the following.
  I discovered that I needed the conversion utilities for Unix as
  well, and wrote these two filters in a Unix system using Pascal
  making the programs as portable as possible. I then imported the
  source code to my PC and recompiled them with Turbo Pascal.
  Because of their origin ASC2IBM.EXE and IBM2ASC.EXE have not been
  optimized for Turbo Pascal speed.

- QUOTE.EXE switches have been redesigned. It now works in the same
  way as my Unix quote filter. Those of you who might be interested
  in my Unix programs, and have and ftp capability, can obtain them
  by anonymous ftp from the University of Vaasa, Finland, Sun 4,
  site 128.214.12.3, directory /unix/ts.


TSFILT15.ARC has the following enhancements and fixes:

- PC2UNIX.EXE, UNIX2PC.EXE, and QUOTE.EXE have been introduced to
  the package.

- All the programs have been recompiled with a lower heap limit.

- LOGFILT.EXE no longer uses direct video output, which means
  enhanced compatibility.

- FLSUBS.EXE, TOASC.EXE, TOASCI.EXE, and TOIBM.EXE have been made
  more tolerant to the order of parameters and switches.
