PaperLess MicroViewer - Revision history

Thorsted: /* Links */

2022-07-28T04:24:05Z

‎Links

Thorsted at 02:49, 28 July 2022

2022-07-28T02:49:15Z

Thorsted at 02:22, 28 July 2022

2022-07-28T02:22:29Z

AndrewFerguson: Added short page on the PaperLess format, and its viewer, PaperLess MicroViewer

2022-07-26T10:00:00Z

Added short page on the PaperLess format, and its viewer, PaperLess MicroViewer

New page

{{FormatInfo
|formattype=electronic
|subcat=Document
}}

PaperLess is a document format / system developed by Nine to Five Software, of Boulder, Colorado. It is likely to have been released prior to PDF to [[PDF]] (version 2.0.1 was released in 1992) and had similar aims: providing a way to view electronic documents across multiple different machines. Unlike PDF it is application and vendor specific.

There were two main components to the system:

# PaperLess Printer, an authoring application that created a PaperLess document.
# PaperLess MicroView, an application that was bundled with a PaperLess document to provide a single application runtime that, when opened, would display the document.

Given the very limited number of example documents, it is not yet known whether PaperLess documents could be distributed independently of the MicroView runtime.

== Extracting / Converting PaperLess Documents ==

Although the file format for PaperLess documents has not been reverse-engineered (yet!), it is still possible to extract a document from the PaperLess MicroViewer application. TO do this, open the PaperLess MicroViewer document/application in an emulator that supports printing (such as [https://basilisk.cebix.net/ Basilisk II]), and choose the 'Print' option. This will give a [[PostScript]] output, which can be interpreted by modern tools and, for example, turned into a [[PDF]].

Although the document is contained entirely within the [[Data Fork]] of the PaperLess MicroViewer application, since it is an application it will not open without it's accompanying [[Resource Fork]]. This is a problem because unless preserved in an archive format that preserves resource forks (such as [[Stuffit]]'s .sit or [[BinHex]]'s .bin), the resource fork will be lost. It may(?) be possible to get around this issue by copying the resource fork from another PaperLess MicroViewer application, but at the time of writing, the number of available samples of such files is one, so this cannot be tested.

== Example Files ==
* The [https://archive.org/details/hypercard_laserwriter-plus-take-apart LaserWriter / LaserWriter Plus Take Apart instructions], provided by Apple on the [https://archive.org/details/apple-service-source-v2.5-cd-rom-set-1997 December 1997 Apple Service Source CD] were published in the PaperLess MicroViewer format. This document has been extracted from the CD and uploaded to the Internet Archive.

==Screenshots==
[[Image:Paperless-splash.png|400px]]
[[Image:Paperless-info.png|400px]]

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 ==Links==
 * [https://archive.org/details/MacWEEKV07N09/page/n5/mode/1up MacWEEK article 1993]
 ==Screenshots==
 [[Image:Paperless-splash.png|400px]]
 [[Image:Paperless-info.png|400px]]

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 Although the file format for PaperLess documents has not been reverse-engineered (yet!), it is still possible to extract a document from the PaperLess MicroViewer application. TO do this, open the PaperLess MicroViewer document/application in an emulator that supports printing (such as [https://basilisk.cebix.net/ Basilisk II]), and choose the 'Print' option. This will give a [[PostScript]] output, which can be interpreted by modern tools and, for example, turned into a [[PDF]].
-Although the document is contained entirely within the [[Data Fork]] of the PaperLess MicroViewer application, since it is an application it will not open without it's accompanying [[Resource Fork]]. This is a problem because unless preserved in an archive format that preserves resource forks (such as [[Stuffit]]'s .sit or [[BinHex]]'s .bin), the resource fork will be lost. It may(?) be possible to get around this issue by copying the resource fork from another PaperLess MicroViewer application, but at the time of writing, the number of available samples of such files is one, so this cannot be tested.
+Although the document is contained entirely within the [[Data Fork]] of the PaperLess MicroViewer application, since it is an application it will not open without it's accompanying [[Resource Fork]]. This is a problem because unless preserved in an archive format that preserves resource forks (such as [[Stuffit]]'s .sit or [[MacBinary]]'s .bin), the resource fork will be lost. It may(?) be possible to get around this issue by copying the resource fork from another PaperLess MicroViewer application, but at the time of writing, the number of available samples of such files is one, so this cannot be tested.
 == Example Files ==