{"id":10110,"date":"2013-10-26T15:00:04","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=10110"},"modified":"2026-02-13T20:25:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T01:25:55","slug":"protext-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/26\/protext-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Protext lives!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Protext<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh man, Protext<\/a>! For years, it was all I used: every magazine article, every essay at university (all two of them), my undergraduate dissertation (now mercifully lost to time: The Parametric Design of a Medium Specific Speed Pump Impeller<\/em>, complete with spline-drawing code in HiSoft BASIC for the Amiga, is unlikely to be of value to anyone these days), letters \u2014you name it, I used Protext for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first had it on 16kB EPROM for the Amstrad CPC464; instant access with |P<\/strong><\/span>. I then ran it on the Amiga, snagging a cheap copy direct from the authors at a trade show. I think I had it for the PC, but I don’t really remember my DOS days too well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The freeware version runs quite nicely under dosemu<\/a>. You can even get it to print directly to PDF:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. In your Linux printer admin, set up a CUPS PDF printer. Anything sent to it will appear as a PDF file in the folder ~\/PDF<\/span>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Add the following lines to your ~\/.dosemurc<\/span>:
    $_lpt1 = “lpr -l -P PDF”<\/span>
    $_printer_timeout = (20) <\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. In Protext, configure your printer to be a PostScript printer on LPT1:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The results come out not bad at all:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"protext<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Protext’s file import and export is a bit dated. You can use the CONVERT utility to create RTF, but it assumes Code page 437<\/a>, so your accents won’t come out right. Adding \\ansicpg437<\/span> to the end of the first line should make it read okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    (engraving of Michel de Montaigne in mad puffy sleeves: public domain from Wikimedia Commons<\/em>: File:Michel de Montaigne 1.jpg – Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Oh man, Protext! For years, it was all I used: every magazine article, every essay at university (all two of them), my undergraduate dissertation (now mercifully lost to time: The Parametric Design of a Medium Specific Speed Pump Impeller, complete with spline-drawing code in HiSoft BASIC for the Amiga, is unlikely to be of value […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[1912,641,2738,2737,270,2734,765,2736,2735],"class_list":["post-10110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","tag-amiga","tag-amstrad","tag-arnor","tag-dosbox","tag-linux","tag-msdos","tag-pdf","tag-protext","tag-wordprocessor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-2D4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10110"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18047,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110\/revisions\/18047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}