How to transfer the text in a quill doc file to a modern PC

[dlsa]

Hello,

Is there any way, I can export the text inside a Quill document, to a text file readable on a modern PC ?

Thanks,
Regards

[tofro]

If you're prepared to loose formatting (i.e., export as pure text), the simplest thing is to <F3> ,<F3> "Files", "Export"

[Andrew]

Hello,

Is there any way, I can export the text inside a Quill document, to a text file readable on a modern PC ?

Thanks,
Regards

Quill-View is a simple application to convert QL Quill files to Text (UTF-8) and HTML format. It translates all Q-DOS characters and most of the commonly used formatting features in Quill
quilltortf is a Quill DOC to RTF Rich Text File word processor file conversion
ql2pc is a file transfer utility for word processing files between QL and PC. Converts Quill, Perfection and Text 87 to plain text, RTF or HTML, or HTML into ASCII.

You can download them here: http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/filetran/index.html
I only used Quill View. It's not 100% perfect, but it works for most formatted texts.

[bwinkel67]

Quill-View works really well in preserving the original format. However, you cannot do much with the resulting document since it adds a lot of formatting code to generate that view. I did a video on all that back in summer 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilMfmwQRhUY

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

The easiest way is to print the file in Quill to a file.

Press: F3
Press: P

Then enter a filename, instead of the Printer port.

This will produce a ASCII file with a _lis extension.

Or transfer the Quill file to PC and use Norman Dunbar Stripper program to convert other file formats.

[pjw]

<> Is there any way, I can export the text inside a Quill document, to a text file readable on a modern PC ?

As you will have seen above there are many ways, though the end result will vary. I find the best way to retain the original formatting and layout is:
1. File-copy the doc to your PC
2. Drag and drop the doc onto Quill-View
3. Select all the text in the resulting HTML display and copy it to the clip board (CTRL+A, CTRL+C)
4. Drop the clip board into M$ Word (CTRL+V), and Bob's your uncle!
Sadly, neither Libre Office nor Wordpad will do the trick. I dont know about Office365 or Google docs but it might be worth a try if you dont have Word.

[NormanDunbar]

Qstripper, https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QStripper/releases might be useful. Version 1.17 for 64 bit Linux is best, 1.16 for 32 bit Linux and all Windows versions.

Click the arrow beside the "assets" text to get a list of downloads. You don't need the source files.

You might need the QT4 support files though,.

The export menu item has many options including PDF, HTML, Docbook, etc.

Cheers,
Norm.

[dilwyn]

Hi,
The easiest way is to print the file in Quill to a file.
Press: F3
Press: P
Then enter a filename, instead of the Printer port.
This will produce a ASCII file with a _lis extension.
Or transfer the Quill file to PC and use Norman Dunbar Stripper program to convert other file formats.

It's possible to take this a stage further by creating a printer_dat driver for Quill or Xchange which are suited for file transfer rather than printing, e.g. put in short html tags instead of printer codes to transfer Quill to html files just by printing to file without needing external software. You can do quite a bit more with Xchange in this respect as you might expect. There are one or two examples tucked away somewhere on my website.

[Derek_Stewart]

<> Is there any way, I can export the text inside a Quill document, to a text file readable on a modern PC ?

As you will have seen above there are many ways, though the end result will vary. I find the best way to retain the original formatting and layout is:
1. File-copy the doc to your PC
2. Drag and drop the doc onto Quill-View
3. Select all the text in the resulting HTML display and copy it to the clip board (CTRL+A, CTRL+C)
4. Drop the clip board into M$ Word (CTRL+V), and Bob's your uncle!
Sadly, neither Libre Office nor Wordpad will do the trick. I dont know about Office365 or Google docs but it might be worth a try if you dont have Word.

This is strange, as I can copy and paste from Quill-View, QStripper into any Wordprocessor, including MS Office, LibreOffice, OpenOffice, which retains the formatting or text editors, which do not retain the formatting and keep the structure.

I prefer Norm's QStripper, as there are more export formats available.

But using Quill to produce a HTML version in a QL environment, sounds a good idea, thought it has already been done?

[RalfR]

But using Quill to produce a HTML version in a QL environment, sounds a good idea, thought it has already been done?

I think, Dilwyn has done a simple HTML printer_dat for the Psion suite.

Is there a QStripper version for windows?