Name: WordStar for MS-DOS Document
Version: 4.0
Description: WordStar is a Word Processor application originally published by MicroPro. WS4 files currently cannot by identified though a PRONOM identification signature.
On the surface it's a plain text file, however the format 'shifts' the last byte of each word. Effectively it is 'flipping' the first bit of the ASCII character from 0 to 1. so a lower case 'r' (hex value 0x72) becomes 'ò' (hex value 0xF2); lower case 'd' (hex 0x64) becomes 'ä' (hex 0xE4) and so on.
It should be possible to write a simple decoder application for WS4 files, however note that the conjecture above is based on observation of a limited pool of files, and there may be additional subtleties yet to be encountered and understood. Please contact the PRONOM team if you have any further information about this format.
Deprecated: false
MIMEType:
PUID: x-fmt/260
sameAs : PRONOM: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/x-fmt/260
Extension: ws
Magic: false
Container Magic: false
Binary Magic: false
Signature Priority Over:
See Also (e.g. Wikidata, Library of Congress):
Software that can read the format:
Alias:
Class: http://the-fr.org/def/format-registry/FileFormat
Type: http://the-fr.org/def/format-registry/WordprocessedText
SPARQL: http://the-fr.org/public/sparql/endpoint.php?query=describe+%3Chttp://the-fr.org/id/file-format/260%3E&output=&jsonp=&key=&show_inline=1