The Signum! file format (SDO)

The Signum! word processor was a text editing application from the german software publisher “Application Systems Heidelberg” (ASH), written for the ATARI ST. It was one of the most popular word processors available for that system. This document is as far as I know the only description of that file format that is available online.

All of the code snippets in this document are simplified pseudo-code, even though they are inspired by the nom parser-combinator library. For general information on Signum! documents, have a look at this page.

The container

Every SDO file starts with the bytes 73 64 6f 63, that is sdoc in most ASCII-compatible encodings, including UTF-8 and the ATARI ST Character Set.

Following this is a sequence of sub-files, that is a 4 byte lowercase alphanumeric name, a 32bit big-endian length-specifier and then a binary section of that length. In pseudo-code, that is

tag("sdoc");
while len > 0 {
  key = take(4);
  len = be_u32();
  bytes = take(len);
}

The individual parts

The first section in all the files that I have available has the name 0001. I assume that is intended to be a file format version number at the same time.

The sections are:

Version 1 Header 0001

This section is mostly zeros, with the creation date at offset 72 ($48) and the modified date at offset 76 ($4c). Both are given as two WORDs (i.e. u16 / 2 bytes) representing date and time respectively, that have the same layout as returned by the GEMDOS functions Tgetdate and Tgettime.

take(72)
created.date = be_u16()
created.time = be_u16()
modified.date = be_u16()
modified.time = be_u16()

This section is usually 128 bytes long

Character Sets cset

This section is an array of 8 times 10 bytes, each holding a zero-terminated character-set name. I’ve found some documents where the first slot is empty, so you alway

for i in 0..8 {
  let bytes = take(10);
  chsets[i] = zt_string(bytes);
}

This section is usually 80 bytes long

System parameters sysp

This section contains information on default page parameters as well as general formatting options.

take(50); // unknown

space_width    = be_u16();  // Leerzeichenbreite
letter_spacing = be_u16();  // Sperrung
line_distance  = be_u16();  // Hauptzeilenabstand
index_distance = be_u16();  // Indexabstand
margin_left    = be_u16();  // Linker Rand (0)
margin_right   = be_u16();  // Rechter Rand (6.5 * 90)
header         = be_u16();  // Kopfzeilen (0.1 * 54)
footer         = be_u16();  // Fußzeilen (0.1 * 54)
page_length    = be_u16();  // Seitenlänge (10.4 * 54)

page_numbering = bytes16(); // 0x5800 == keine Seitennummerierung
format_options = bytes16(); // 0b10011 == format. optionen

bytes16();                  // 0x302 == trennen
bytes16();                  // 0 == Randausgleiche und Sperren
bytes32();                  // 1 == nicht einrücken, Absatzabstand mitkorrigieren

This section is usually 110 bytes long

Page Buffer pbuf

This section contains information on the pages in the document. It contains the number of pages, two unknown values (or some other 8 bytes), five times the tag unde in ASCII, which may or may not be related to my documents using the german language and 34 bytes of information for every page.

page_count = be_u32();
be_u32(); // called "kl" in some places, possibly length of each entry
first_page_nr = be_u32();
for i in 0..5 {
  tag("unde");
}
for p in 0..page_count {
  index = be_u16();
  physical_page_nr = be_u16();
  logical_page_nr = be_u16();
  
  take(2);

  margin_left = be_u16();
  margin_right = be_u16(); // from the left
  margin_top = be_u16();
  margin_bottom = be_u16();

  take(18);
}

The length of this section depends on the content

Text Buffer tebu

This section contains the bulk of the document content. It is made up of lines, which correspond to the vertical alignment from top to bottom. It starts with one u32, which is supposed to be the total line count or total height of the document (?).

The rest of this section is a sequence of lines, with the following layout:

vskip = be_u16();
length = be_u16();
content = take(length);

Lines

Each content starts with a 16 bit identifier, that is probably a bitfield:

  • 0x0001: prefixed with a 16 bit value, possibly hskip
  • 0x0080: prefixed with 16 bit page number
  • 0x0400: standard line (Hauptzeile)
  • 0x0800: paragraph
  • 0x1000: non-text content
  • 0x2000: page-end
  • 0x4000: page-start
  • 0x8000: page-command (always set for start and end)

These are the only combinations I have seen used in documents: 0x0000, 0x0400, 0x0401, 0x0800, 0x0C00, 0x0C01, 0x1000, 0x1400, 0x1C00, 0xA000, 0xA080, 0xC000, 0xC080

Characters

Every non-page-command can be followed by some amount of characters. Note that there is no space character, instead the offset between characters is longer, wherever a space character would be used in other encodings. Characters are 2 bytes wide by default and use the following encoding:

If the first bit is set, then the command is a standard character and the next 6 bits encode the offset from the previous drawing position. The last bit has some other function, possibly related to the charset used.

If the first bit is not set, the command is 4 bytes long and the last two bytes encode the offset value in big endian. If the second bit is set, the character is underlined.

The second byte is always the character. The highest bit of the character is the lower bit of the selected charset. The last bit of the first byte is the high bit of the selected charset.

Normal character:

+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| 1 |         OFFSET        | CHSET |          CHARACTER        |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

Extended character

+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| 0 | U | V | W | X | Y |   CHSET   |          CHARACTER        |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
| A | B | I | D | S |                 OFFSET                    |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
  • A: unknown (wide?)
  • B: bold
  • I: italic
  • D: unknown (tall?)

  • S: small

  • U: underlined
  • V: unknown (mark 1 ?)
  • W: unknown (mark 2 ?)
  • X: unknown (mark 3 ?)
  • Y: footnote

Hardcopy Images hcim

This sections contains information on the images embedded in the document.

site_tbl_len = be_u32(); // == offset to image table
img_count = be_u16();
site_count = be_u16();
take(8)
for i in 0..site_count {
  site[i].page = be_u16();
  site[i].pos_x = be_u16();
  site[i].pos_y = be_u16();
  site[i].site_w = be_u16();
  site[i].site_h = be_u16();
  be_u16();
  site[i].sel_x = be_u16();
  site[i].sel_y = be_u16();
  site[i].sel_w = be_u16();
  site[i].sel_h = be_u16();
  be_u16();
  be_u16();
  be_u16();
  site[i].img = be_u16();
  be_u16();
  bytes16();
}
for i in 0..img_count {
  buf_len = be_u32()
  name_bytes = take(28);
  img[i].name = zt_string(name_bytes);
  img[i].bytes = take(buf_len - 32)
}

The bytes of an image correspond to a bimc encoded file without the leading bimc0002 magic bytes.

This section seems optional

This section is usually 16 bytes long

Unknown pl01

This section seems optional

This section is usually 0 bytes long

Unknown syp2

This section seems optional

This section is usually 64 bytes long

References