Michael Anderson, one of the independent support providers and contract developers in the 3000 community, posed a question: How can you get the 3000's spooler output into shape for use in Microsoft Word?

There's an answer among the third party tools, yes; Hillary Software’s product, ByRequest. The product will pick up spoolfiles from the HP 3000 and convert them into Word or Excel format. But what if your 3000 budget is as tamped down as the stock market? You'd be looking for something created by the community.

Dave Powell has your answer. He's built a command file called hp2rtf, tapping the Rich Text Format that's a little-used but powerful bridge for Word document exchange.