How is a document formed in an MS DOS program?

Question

Delphi

An old DOS accounting program. On request, it generates certain documents using the DOS editor, but instead of tables, the editor uses underscores, dashes, equals and other characters, thus forming a table. Is it possible to make the editor create a full table instead of characters? In what direction to dig in general?
DB FOXPRO/LAN 2.0

Answer 1

First of all, dig in the direction of leaving this program for something more modern, so as not to have problems with launching this miracle, printing from it, etc.
If you want "beautiful" reports, then write a program that will access the data of your accounting system and generate reports in any report generator that is convenient for you. And then think about it and rewrite the whole program! :)

Answer 2

In FoxPro under Dos, reports can only be created as text files and nothing else. In principle, the term "full table" is not clear.
If you need to generate a report and then open it in MS Excel, then you can do it in two ways:
1. Generate a report as a dbf table
2. Generate a report as a text file with tab or semicolon separators. In this case, you need to understand that the text is stored in the CP866 encoding and the decimal separator is a dot instead of a comma. As a rule, in Excel, code page conversion is carried out automatically or on request, a semicolon will have to be replaced. It is better to do this before converting to Excel, otherwise in some cases the numbers may become dates.
Of course, in both cases, you will have to format such a report manually or write a special utility.
You can also save the report in XML format, which is understood by all modern editors. But in my opinion this is the most insane option.
In real life, it's high time to forget about FoxPro

Answer 3

What does "complete spreadsheet" mean? Decorated with pseudographics? (there are pseudo-graphic symbols in the dos encoding tables - single and double lines, corners, intersections...) Foxpro is not only a DBMS, it is something resembling 1C - both a database and a language at the same time. To get a table with pseudographics, the foxpro program will have to be edited - I would not risk it :)
If you mean a normal table running in a spreadsheet processor, then only through an intermediate database file that is opened by the office.
If this data has at least some value, it is better to transfer the database to any modern engine. And it's not even about fashion or anything. There are fewer and fewer people who can even just read the code and say what this code does. And the more time passes, the less likely it is to find such a person and the more likely it is that one day this program will fall and never get up again ...

Answer 4

In theory, if you run Word and open an old file in it, it will be able to convert it itself.
If it can't, use abby finereader or other ocr services. I, for example, do everything necessary with abby screenshot reader - a very convenient thing.
If everything is wrong and everything is wrong, you can transfer all the business logic of the old program to the new one, which will work fine. It can even be an ordinary macro or an add-in in excel, which will undoubtedly simplify life. However, you need to spend your time on this or hire a person who will do it.

Answer 5

Look at the encoding cp866
There, starting from b0 to df, the characters that you can draw tables with.