Does your PDF printer have any DPI settings, if not in the Digital Paper application's print settings, in Control Panel? If not, perhaps you could try installing something like a HP LaserJet driver which is set up to print to file, as I suspect they'd have DPI settings. That would give you a PostScript file you could presumably convert to PDF using something like Ghostscript.

I did a Google search for "digital paper" "common ground" and didn't go through all the results but it looks like at least some Mac version of the creating software might be available. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't very useful for converting it to other formats though, but I could be wrong.

Initially more for poop and laughter, I thought I'd give this a whirl in Debian-12....

...download helptext.exe above, launch it with WINE...
....File->Print-> Print to file ...(this will invoke the builtin wine postscript engine)...give the file a name...ie; helptext.ps....
......launch Okular , File -> Import Postscript as PDF ...select the helptext.ps file created above...
........File -> Save As -> helptext.pdf

Output here attached.

Note: in the 2nd step above, I could've printed via CUPS in 300/600/1200DPI but essentially that would've been just piping the postscript file to the printer driver, and YMMV depending on driver/filter.

That output looks a bit jagged, I guess the text is turned into bitmaps without anti-aliasing at some point? I wonder if that has already been done in the .exe file, or if it's in the process of printing? It's been too long since I've played with this kind of thing, and now I think of it, I think I might have had similar issues myself which I never resolved.

My guess is that my experience with reverse engineering document formats is probably not useful for the Digital Paper format if it's anything like PDF, but I can't help but wonder what it looks like 😁 Has anyone checked with a resource editor (e.g. Borland's Resource Workshop) or maybe even something like 7-Zip whether the document can be easily extracted from the .exe file?

Thanks doshea and giantclam!

giantclam, the PDF in the quality you created is just what I was looking for. Thanks very much! Would you be able to do the same with manual.exe?

doshea wrote on 2023-10-15, 00:00:

Has anyone checked ... whether the document can be easily extracted from the .exe file?

Yes, the EXE's have the option to save the document, and it outputs to a .dp file "Digital Paper" format. But I can't find any converters to PDF (or anything else) for it. .dp is a proprietary format, but it would be cool if someone could reverse engineer it to be able to make a converter to PDF for it.

Interestingly, if you select "properties" or something from within the program, it says "file type: Microsoft Word document". So, maybe it could be done, but opening it in Word doesn't yield good results (of course I'm using a more modern version of Word).

Tig77 wrote on 2023-10-15, 01:50:

Thanks doshea and giantclam!

giantclam, the PDF in the quality you created is just what I was looking for. Thanks very much! Would you be able to do the same with manual.exe?

Umm... I just had a look ~ manual.exe presents pages in landscape mode on some non-supported paper size (as far as the wine postscript filter goes), so the print to file function ends up in portrait mode (not what we need), and I can't fathom any way to change that in winecfg....

....however, I could grab some images that are in the same sort of quality, and you could import those into a new pdf to make ends meet...will that do? (example below)

giantclam wrote on 2023-10-15, 02:32:

Umm... I just had a look ~ manual.exe presents pages in landscape mode on some non-supported paper size (as far as the wine postscript filter goes), so the print to file function ends up in portrait mode (not what we need), and I can't fathom any way to change that in winecfg....

I guess even when you set landscape mode to print, it still ends up being in portrait? Even when you set the print settings in the manual.exe to landscape?

giantclam wrote:

....however, I could grab some images that are in the same sort of quality, and you could import those into a new pdf to make ends meet...will that do? (example below)

Thanks, that should be okay. Thanks!

Ok... the other pages...

To answer your question, no I didn't try printing (direct from manual.exe) as you asked about PDF and not hard-copies =)

giantclam wrote on 2023-10-15, 03:11:

To answer your question, no I didn't try printing (direct from manual.exe) as you asked about PDF and not hard-copies =)

Thanks for the other pages. Much appreciated!

Regarding printing direct from manual.exe, there is an option to "print to file" and there you can select landscape mode. I wonder if that would allow the proper layout for a PDF?

These are fully text searchable as well and smaller in size .

Detailed workflow (for anyone needing to do something similar):
a) Spin up a Windows XP virtual machine
b) Install a PostScript capable printer on whatever printer port (I chose an HP Laserjet 5 on LPT1). The printer does not need to physically exist as we just need the driver installed . Using one of the bundled XP drivers is fine .
c) run each exe file, select the printer you "installed", set DPI to highest possible, set to landscape (if desired) and check the print to file before "printing".
d) you will be prompted to enter a file name (I chose manuel.ps and helphint.ps respectively). These are in PostScript format
e) Once the files have been created, copy over to modern machine and open each one in GSVIEW (a Ghostscript frontend) and save as PDF .

Thanks very much darry! Using a Windows XP virtual machine gives newer and higher DPI printer drivers than Windows 95 for sure. I tried your steps on a Windows 95 virtual machine before I posted here, but was limited to 300 DPI due to the older drivers.

For google search purposes, the manuals in this thread are from GSP's "Pinball Classics" collection which includes "Power Pinball", "Slam Tilt Pinball" and "Arcade Pinball", also known as "Pinball Mania Plus" and "Pinball Collection Vol 1" and "Pinball Collection Vol 2".