Dear Ven. Pesala, Paul and friends,

Paul, there are various ways to recover the documents.

1. Purchase a copy of WordPerfect for Windows.
2. Install the WordPerfect 5.x converter for MS Word.
3. Set up DOS and WordPerfect on an old system with a dot matrix
printer.

I believe option 2 is a less troublesome one. MS Word can easily
import all WP documents, with the WP 5.x converter installed.
However, even after resurrection, non-ASCII characters would be
illegible.

The next step also comes with options. We can either

1. use the [Edit Menu] Find and Replace facility to replace the
characters, or
2. write a [Tools Menu] VBA macro to automate the process.

Both methods are well documented in MS Word's online help system.
There are members in this group who have previously performed macro
stunts, but for converting Velthuis to Unicode. Similar things can be
done to convert any other character(s) to another character(s).

Fortunately, there are only a limited number of characters which
requires attention. However, Option 1 is good only if there is one or
a few documents. If there is a bulk of them, it is better to spend
some time with the macro. There is actually one floating around (for
converting Velthuis to Unicode), and you can modify it to suit your
purpose. If only someone can point out its download location.

Ven. Pesala's recommendations on Unicode is good, for it is
irrational to use a non-Unicode fonts for Pali documents. You will
most likely face the same dilemma ten years later.

I believe the same can be said of the good old WordStar.


metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:

Forget about WordPerfect. Use Unicode fonts, and create a Word
keyboard template for Pali documents. See my fonts page for more
details and some Unicode fonts. Gentium is the best at the moment.

http://www.aimwell.org/Fonts/fonts.html