translation programs that would be useful...

[Chan Wilson]

Working with All These Lovely Computers, I've come up with a list of
utilities that would be highly useful, I believe...

Note that these are things that I would find useful, your
wants/needs/desires may vary..

Section A:  System Dependent Stuff
----------------------------------
Macintosh:
FFTs (foreign file translators) for SparcStation 1.4M and 720K 3.5" floppies,
	MSDOS floppies, ProDOS floppies.

Chooser patch to allow standard UNIX printers to be selected.
OS patch to allow access of HFS (Macintosh OS) disks from A/UX.

Apple IIGS:
FSTs (file system translators) for Macintosh, Sparc (UNIX), MSDOS floppies.
SLIP-based NFS. (two problems)

SparcStation (UNIX):
device drivers (yes?) for MSDOS, Macintosh, ProDOS floppies.


Section B:  (mostly) System Independent Stuff
---------------------------------------------
(Unix, A/UX, ergo, C code that is portable)

AppleSingle/AppleDouble file utilties to allow extraction of data
forks, resources, and whatnot from the UNIX side of the world.

Conversion programs that could translate
	MS Word 4.0 -> ascii,ps,tex,troff
	macdraw/paint -> pbm (i believe these exist),ps
	PageMaker -> FrameMaker,tex,troff (hoh yes.. :)
	
Note that most major spreadsheet programs are available for the above
platforms, so conversion programs either exist or aren't necessary.


Just thinking out loud.  I can definately see some commercial
possibilities here for the enterprising programmer, although half the
work would be finding data sheets for the formats...

--Chan

Chan Wilson
SRI Intl. Network Information Systems Center
333 Ravenswood Ave., EK289			Internet: cwilson at nisc.sri.com
Menlo Park, CA., 94025				Phone: (415)859-5921