CHARCONV is a program or filter that allows the transformation of
one encoding of an extended character set (e.g., ISO Latin-1) to
another (e.g., MS DOS, Macintosh). Note that the encoding of umlauts,
diphthongs, or diacritics is quite different in ISO Latin-1
(Unix, MS Windows), MS DOS (code page 437) or Apple Macintosh.

Moreover, this program takes care of transcriptions used in TeX or HTML
(hypertext markup language). Internally, a font description similar to the
TeX code (but without math mode) is used. Tags and macros are removed
from HTML and TeX input. (With respect to TeX, the resulting plain
text file is similar to that produced by utilities such as "detex" or
"unretex", but umlauts are taken into account.)

Furthermore, the program allows conversion between different
end-of-line markers (Unix: LF, DOS: CRLF, Mac: CR).

However, the text is not formatted.

Installation:

The file "sys_def.h" tries to define the system (and includes stdio.h);
it may have to be edited.
To install, look at the Makefile, edit the paths etc., type "make".
(Followed by "make install" and "make install.man".)

The program has been compiled successfully on the following systems:

Sun Sparc running SunOS 4.1.1 with cc or gcc
SGI Iris Indigo running IRIX 4.0.5F
IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.2
CDC 4680 running EP/IX 2.1.1
IBM PC running DOS with Borland C++ 3.1
Atari ST with Turbo C 2.0

Burkhard Kirste (kirste@chemie.fu-berlin.de)