Blogging with the C128

I know it is probably strange, but I really do like typing on the C128 keyboard. It is something that I miss, when working on the laptop. I would really like to be using my C128 more for typing documents, for the blog and such. But the problem is getting the text into a format that I can use on-line.

(tthis is a re-post from my Commodore blog at:  http://istilladoremy64.chorusgrove.com)

One method of getting my documents from the C128 over to my laptop, for getting onto the Net, is to use VICE. But, that's been a challenge for me, as well, because the word processors I typically use on the C128 do not export “clean” text that I can import into a PC text editor. I really don't want to spend a lot of time fiddling with the ASCII data dumps in order to get it into a readable state. The less clean-up work, the better.

But, recently, I did a video review of some nice C128 software that I found on Loadstar. One of those applications was a word processor, called ArcheType. It is an easy-to-use word processor with some useful features and I liked how it performed and looked on the C128. The icing on the cake, as I have since found out, is that ArcheType also prints out (or exports, in this case) very clean ASCII text. When I print my documents to .txt files in VICE, the document layout even remains in-tact.

So, with just a few steps, to get my ArcheType document off of the physical floppy disk, onto an SD card and into my laptop, I have found a not-so-annoying way of using my C128 to create more of my on-line documents; like this blog post, for example.

To get the file into an ASCII file, which I can cut and paste into the wiki editor on the web browser, I just “print” the document in ArcheType via VICE. VICE then creates a PRINT.DUMP file and I open that up in the web browser. It's a few extra steps, but, I think it is worth it, if it allows me to use my C128 for word processing again, from time to time.

If you'd like to learn more about ArcheType, here's a link to a Review I just did about it (which was also composed in ArcheType).