Opening old MacWrite files

I open MacWrite files with Word 5.1. They open fine, except you have to use
the Open dialogue. You can't drag them onto the icon. I then save them as
Word 5.1 files and open in Word 2004.

Since the MacIntel machines will not run OS 9, I was planning to do a final
conversion of my thousands of MacWrite files through some automated
process, with Quickeys, Applescript, HyperCard, Revolution or something
else.

There must be lots of people in this position. Does anyone know of a posted
script or other solution for this?

Bruce
--
Bruce Lewis
Lewis & Collyer
160 John Street, Suite 401
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5V 2E5
(416) 598-4357
FAX (416) 598-1067
brucelewiscoll.com
nancylewiscoll.com
sandylewiscoll.com
joanlewiscoll.com
evalewiscoll.com

On 8/14/06 1:50 PM, "Bruce Lewis" <lewisbrucerogers.com> wrote:

> I open MacWrite files with Word 5.1. They open fine, except you have to use
> the Open dialogue. You can't drag them onto the icon. I then save them as
> Word 5.1 files and open in Word 2004.
>
> Since the MacIntel machines will not run OS 9, I was planning to do a final
> conversion of my thousands of MacWrite files through some automated
> process, with Quickeys, Applescript, HyperCard, Revolution or something
> else.
>
> There must be lots of people in this position. Does anyone know of a posted
> script or other solution for this?
>
Does Maclink translate MacWrite files?

--
<watson.allencomcast.net>
Scripts for OE and Entourage:
<http://homepage.mac.com/allen_a_watson/AppleScripts_For_You>
Entourage questions: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>

I have well over a thousand MacWrite Pro files. In fact, most all of my writings are in this format. I consider MWP one of the best WP programs because all four margins were shown, one page at a time. None of this dashed line indicating a page break. I can use WORD, Select and then Copy into Apple Works or Pages. But this is a heck of a conversion job. Since Osamu bin Gates supports MacWrite files, I am puzzled as to why Apple doesn't support Apple developed software. Any ideas out there?

Opening MacWrite Pro Documents

On 8/26/06 14:46, "Bill Price" <billprice2verizon.net> wrote:

> I have well over a thousand MacWrite Pro files. In fact, most all of my
> writings are in this format. I consider MWP one of the best WP programs
> because all four margins were shown, one page at a time. None of this dashed
> line indicating a page break. I can use WORD, Select and then Copy into Apple
> Works or Pages. But this is a heck of a conversion job. Since Osamu bin
> Gates supports MacWrite files, I am puzzled as to why Apple doesn't support
> Apple developed software. Any ideas out there?

MacLink Plus

<http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/>

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

As far as I can tell, the new maclink translators don't handle the early Macwrite files. However, if you have an old 68030 machine, you can run the old maclink translators and translate the stuff to RTF.

On 8/29/06 09:45, "Clyde Kahrl" <ckahrlknox.net> wrote:

> As far as I can tell, the new maclink translators don't handle the early
> Macwrite files. However, if you have an old 68030 machine, you can run the
> old maclink translators and translate the stuff to RTF.

I'm a few versions back, (v13) but I'm seeing MacWrite II and MacWrite Pro.

I think in 2006, the idea that you're not still using MacWrite 1.0 is
probably acceptable.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

I have a client who has some 10,000 plus active MacWrite 1.0 files
from a legal practice. It has been a real challenge to move them
forward. In researching the translation problem, it appears the last
commercial version of MacLink Plus that handles MacWrite 1.0 files
natively is version 11.

We have been successful in using WordPerfect 3.5 under OS 9.2 to open
the MacWrite files directly and save them to rtf format, and then
using Microsoft Word to open and save them as standard Word 98 and
2004 Mac files for use in OS X. So far, most file formatting has
remained intact.

This is a slow and tedious process, but it does work.


Victor Alexander
redstickearthlink.net

At 12:12 PM -0700 8/31/06, Victor Alexander wrote:
>I have a client who has some 10,000 plus active MacWrite 1.0 files
>from a legal practice. It has been a real challenge to move them
>forward. In researching the translation problem, it appears the last
>commercial version of MacLink Plus that handles MacWrite 1.0 files
>natively is version 11.
>
>We have been successful in using WordPerfect 3.5 under OS 9.2 to open
>the MacWrite files directly and save them to rtf format, and then
>using Microsoft Word to open and save them as standard Word 98 and
>2004 Mac files for use in OS X. So far, most file formatting has
>remained intact.

Try a late version of Office for Mac - like Office 1998 under OS 9.
It can open MacWrite and save to RTF which you could then open in any
version of Office or other apps that support RTF.

If you're interested, for a small fee I could write a small OS X
program for you that would batch convert the entire batch to RTF in a
matter of minutes.

Mike

<<We have been successful in using WordPerfect 3.5 under OS 9.2 to open the MacWrite files directly and save them to rtf format, and then using Microsoft Word to open and save them as standard Word 98 and 2004 Mac files for use in OS X. So far, most file formatting has remained intact. This is a slow and tedious process, but it does work.>>

(Yes, Adam, I know this is a philosophical tangent, and thus I won't be offended if you leave it out for digest-brevity sake, but I can't resist commenting)

This whole quandary is an interesting illustration of the myth that digital preservation is the panacea for preserving documents, isn't it? This is where the whole concept of the "paperless society" fails. With the new generation of Macintels, even the WordPerfect solution will no longer work, since it isn't possible to run OS 9.2 and thus WordPerfect on the new Macs. And this is only at most 20 years later. Imagine 100 years from now, our great-great-grandchildren want to look at the old family photos and letters. They know there are documents on those weird old shiny "DVDs" (or worse, on those plastic things with the metal sliders). But...how the heck do they access them? First they have to find some sort of antique device that can read them. Then they have to find some kind of antique computer that can attach to that device using...what's it called?..."firewire". Then if they've managed to dig up such devices, they have to figure out how to access the files. "It's written here on the disc that the documents are all 'png' and 'pdf' in 'sit archives'...what the heck does that mean?"

If the photos and family writings were in photo albums and files, or even (unlikely but possible) preserved in microform, they'd probably be badly faded, but otherwise immediately accessible. And where digital technology actually does do some magic is that those old faded photos and letters could no doubt be scanned and edited and then printed again in (at least close to) their original quality. But, this is a good cautionary tale about putting all our eggs in the digital-preservation basket. Be careful about thinking "I can scan it and then throw it away!"

--Steve Johgart--

On Sep 1, 2006, at 10:43 AM, SteveJ1 wrote:

> This whole quandary is an interesting illustration of the myth that
> digital preservation is the panacea for preserving documents, isn't
> it? This is where the whole concept of the "paperless society"
> fails. With the new generation of Macintels, even the WordPerfect
> solution will no longer work, since it isn't possible to run OS 9.2
> and thus WordPerfect on the new Macs. And this is only at most 20
> years later. Imagine 100 years from now, our great-great-
> grandchildren want to look at the old family photos and letters.

"Passive digital archiving" can't work. Our friendly, frugal federal
government spent many $millions (OK...a mere pittance to them) a
decade or decade and a half ago, recovering 1950s records. First
they had to order suitable reading equipment built to order (hint:
you're a manufacturer with such capability looking at an RFP--how
much profit do you hide in your proposal?), then do the actual
recovery (which went fairly well: physically, tape handled with a
modicum of care works).

"Active digital archiving" can work. Before the old programs and
equipment goes away, you move the data to the new technology that has
come in. And you keep doing that.

A recurring topic in the local computer club's Saturday morning "open-
to-anything-" gatherings is longevity of DVDs and CDs. I generally
wait until near the end of the discussion and remind them that it
doesn't MATTER whether a DVD lasts in readable form for 10 years or
50 years--it will be necessary to move the data before then anyhow.
Another regular points out that "one copy is not enough"...if he is
not present I make that point.

   --John

On 9/1/06 1:43 PM, "SteveJ1" <stevej1mac.com> wrote:

>> <<We have been successful in using WordPerfect 3.5 under OS 9.2 to open the
>> MacWrite files directly and save them to rtf format, and then using
>> Microsoft Word to open and save them as standard Word 98 and 2004 Mac files
>> for use in OS X. So far, most file formatting has remained intact. This is
>> a slow and tedious process, but it does work.>>

> This whole quandary is an interesting illustration of the myth that digital
> preservation is the panacea for preserving documents, isn't it?

I've never heard of digital preservation called a panacea but it this does
illustrate that the problems and practice of digital preservation are very
different than those of physical objects.

> This is where
> the whole concept of the "paperless society" fails.

I've seen "paperless office" more often than "paperless society" and most of
what that refers to is the kind of stuff you don't want to preserve for the
grandkids (memos, phone directories, etc.) In the home, it would refer to
things like online bank statements and bill paying. Historians may miss such
ephemera but most families wouldn't consider it a part of their legacy.

> With the new generation of
> Macintels, even the WordPerfect solution will no longer work, since it isn't
> possible to run OS 9.2 and thus WordPerfect on the new Macs. And this is only
> at most 20 years later.

Yes, 20 years in many cases is too long to wait between file format
conversions. It would have been easier to find the tools to do such
conversions in 2000 than today.

> Imagine 100 years from now, our
> great-great-grandchildren want to look at the old family photos and letters.
> They know there are documents on those weird old shiny "DVDs" (or worse, on
> those plastic things with the metal sliders). But...how the heck do they
> access them? First they have to find some sort of antique device that can read
> them. Then they have to find some kind of antique computer that can attach to
> that device using...what's it called?..."firewire".

Digital preservation requires a process of regularly moving to newer
physical media. This is not just because of deterioration but also
obsolescence. Fortunately doing this for digital media is much easier than
for analog. Over time, storage capacities and speed go up while costs go
down while the quality stays the same. But you can't wait too long between
transfers and with large archives it could be essentially a continual
process.

> Then if they've managed to
> dig up such devices, they have to figure out how to access the files. "It's
> written here on the disc that the documents are all 'png' and 'pdf' in 'sit
> archives'...what the heck does that mean?"

Today's popular, documented standards like PNG and PDF probably won't be in
common use for decades but there's a good chance they'll be accessible.
StuffIt's compression format probably won't fare as well.

In any case, as with the physical media of a digital archive, the file
formats must be regularly reviewed and converted in a timely fashion. This
actually a trickier problem because different file formats have different
strengths and weaknesses. Even the best word processor conversion ever
available for MacWrite files might result in documents with slightly
different margins, spacing and the like. So to preserve the layout, you
either need to convert to an image format like TIFF or a layout format like
PDF and accept their downsides.

> If the photos and family writings were in photo albums and files, or even
> (unlikely but possible) preserved in microform, they'd probably be badly
> faded, but otherwise immediately accessible.

My understanding is a lot of photos probably won't survive 100 years. There
have been many different processes, chemicals, and papers used over the
years and some don't hold up well over time.

Silver halide on polyester microfilm is incredibly stable, it's expected to
survive 1000 under reasonable environmental conditions. Unless there it was
left out in the sun to bake, it would essentially unchanged 100 years later.

But it's also not in color and while you may be able to view microfilm with
a magnifying glass in a pinch, you'll need access to an expensive, slow and
cumbersome device to print or otherwise transfer it to another medium not to
mention how to get the material on microfilm in the first place. If storing
materials on microfilm had mass appeal, there would be market incentives to
make meeting these needs affordable but that's unlikely to happen.

> And where digital technology
> actually does do some magic is that those old faded photos and letters could
> no doubt be scanned and edited and then printed again in (at least close to)
> their original quality.

The programs can make some educated guesses but they're not really restoring
the content of that physical object.

> But, this is a good cautionary tale about putting all
> our eggs in the digital-preservation basket. Be careful about thinking "I can
> scan it and then throw it away!"

True. I don't think digital preservation, in a sense that is likely to have
the content survive for the periods we're talking about, is an activity for
most households today.

At 12:12 PM -0700 8/31/06, Victor Alexander wrote:
>We have been successful in using WordPerfect 3.5 under OS 9.2 to open
>the MacWrite files directly and save them to rtf format, and then
>using Microsoft Word to open and save them as standard Word 98 and
>2004 Mac files for use in OS X. So far, most file formatting has
>remained intact.

        If they are in RTF that would seem the safest forward going format
- why bother with the "save as Word" until such as time as you actually
need to work with them in Word?

        OpenDocument format might be the best thing if you really do not
want them in RTF.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument>


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

I'm a nimno about all this technology, but I've just purchased the flat screen imac with OS X. I, too, have files I'd like to access that are on MacWrite Pro. I had a Quadra that was dying fast and had everything put onto a zip disk. I also had an imac that was perhaps 10 years old. A friend tried transferring the info from the disk onto the old imac, having also installed OS X onto it. The OS 9 is still there, as well. I was not having success in opening many of the files.

When I bought this new one, they laughed at my zip disk....They transferred the old imac info onto the new one, but there were some things missing. Another friend transferred the zip disk info onto a cd, which I brought to the store. With the help of this site, which my saleswoman found, we were able to transfer by dragging files to Word and saving them as text after copying and pasting the legible writings. So last night I sat here happily doing that transfer process. However. Today when I tried to open these on Word, they were unavailable. wah.

Two questions. Since I am only one step above a Luddite, can anyone offer some suggestions given the equipment and lack of terminology I have? OR, does anyone know anyone in the southern CT area who's good, patient, not expensive, and makes house calls if necessary?

Thanks so much! Andy

Dear Friends:

In the same vein....

I have much writing that is important to me on my original MacSE. It
is using system 6! (I know, I AM old....(sigh)) These are written in
"Write Now". Does anyone else remember that really sleek efficient
word-processor?

Any thoughts or suggestions on jhow I might capture these files and
make them accesible on my newer Macs (mostly running Sustem 10.4)?

Problem 2. I have a Centris 650 running system 7. It too has
important writings .. done in WriteNow, and at least one or two other
word-processing programs. (Not microsoft Word).
Equally important, however, are the music files of a large amount of
my original music done with ProTools (on a NuBus card at that
time ... Sound Designer ll files)

Any thoughts or ideas on retrieving ANY or all of this stuff will be
greatly appreciated.

Thank you.
Robert

I remember having similar problem(s) when converting files from one
format to another. I also remember that for this type of jobs, making
the note (to myself) that RTF proved better than the other formats,
even txt, especially in a Microsoft environement. For important
document, I now save in the original format (application) and RTF; two
versions is just as economical as modifying format much later on. A
UNIVERSAL and UNIQUE format would be the solution.

At 2007-01-11 10:58 -0800 Andy Byrne wrote:

>I, too, have files I'd like to access that are on MacWrite Pro

Andy - snap! I'm running OS X 10.3.9 on a 15" 1GHz Ti PowerBook G4
and from time to time need to check something in a file created up to
20 years ago using MacWrite Pro (also MacWrite II, and even plain
vanilla MacWrite), MacDraw II, ClarisDraw or Resolve. I have
installed all those applications (except for MacDraw II which was
very unhappy) in my OS9 system folder and find that they run much
more stably and reliably than they did on my old 7100 using OS 8.

Of course, I invested in a USB 3.5" floppy drive so I could read the
master discs with the new hardware - but found it wouldn't cope with
the really old single-sided ones, so had to convert those to disc
images on the old machine.

I don't generally do big batches of files, although if there are a
few others in a folder with the one I'm interested in, I do them all
while I've got Classic running. I don't leave it on all the time as
it seems to draw energy from other things in some mysterious way.

>I had a Quadra that was dying fast and had everything put onto a zip disk

Did you know that you can now get USB Zip disc drives quite cheaply?
I got one just recently in a clearance sale at Maplins (UK, like
Radio Shack), but even the online price for a new one from the iomega
website seems quite modest. This may be something to consider in
reducing the number of manglings that your data has suffered.

>we were able to transfer by dragging files to Word and saving them
>as text after copying and pasting the legible writings. So last
>night I sat here happily doing that transfer process. However. Today
>when I tried to open these on Word, they were unavailable. wah.

I wonder if Word is having trouble with file extensions? What type
did you save the converted files as? Plain text, or Word (.doc)?

What do you plan to do with the data? In my own case, if it's only
for reference (ie read-only), I convert the file to PDF. If I want to
be able to edit it, then I choose an appropriate format (such as text
or maybe RTF for MacWrite files) that can be opened in a modern
word-processor such as Pages (which is now getting about as good as
MacWrite Pro was .....).

>Two questions. Since I am only one step above a Luddite, can anyone
>offer some suggestions given the equipment and lack of terminology I
>have? OR, does anyone know anyone in the southern CT area who's
>good, patient, not expensive, and makes house calls if necessary?

I wonder if I can help (he heard himself saying) even though I'm in
England. It depends on the volume of files you want to convert. If a
really small number, I'd be prepared to do it by hand. If a lot,
maybe I could work up an AppleScript (I've always meant to do
something useful with AS) to automate the process for me. Can you say
(a) how many files (approx - 10, 100, 1000?) and (b) what's the total
disc space used in kB or MB? The latter would decide whether I'd be
prepared to receive the stuff over my dial-up connexion or if you'd
need to send me a disc (100/250M Zip, CD, DVD).

Of course, you may not feel happy having a stranger poke around in
your files, and I won't be at all offended if you say no.

Let me know if you want to take this further.

regards

Rowland
--
| Wilma & Rowland Carson http://home.clara.net/rowil/
| <rowilclara.net> ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...

Andy, Check out MacLink Pro

<http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/mlp_xlators.html>

It does many, many types of file translation including MacWrite II and MacWrite Pro.

Terry

On Jan 13, 2007, at 11:37 AM, tcrooker wrote:

> Andy, Check out MacLink Pro
>
> <http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/mlp_xlators.html>


I recently used MacLink Pro to transfer my wife's Writenow files.

It worked very well. I was able to drag a whole folder to it for
translation.

Doug

>Equally important, however, are the music files of a large amount of
>my original music done with ProTools (on a NuBus card at that
>time ... Sound Designer ll files)

Most decent audio programs will open SD2 files, including the
open-source Audacity. It doesn't seem to be able to save things as
SD2, but it can definitely open them. I just tried and succeeded with
a file I converted to SD2 in Peak. Peak absolutely will open and save
SD2, but will also set you back a few C-notes.

Depending on what your Pro Tools projects are like, you may also need
to bounce them down to stereo first, which of course trashes your
capability of re-mixing the old projects. Or you could save each
track as a separate file, although that would become really time
consuming and would require laborious re-assembly on the other side.

Of course Pro Tools is still an actively developed piece of
software/hardware, so if you've got the money to add Pro Tools to
your OS X system, very likely it will open your old projects right up
with no difficulty.

Or are you just having difficulty physically moving the files from
the Centris to a new machine?

--
Greg Sigman, Senior Library Associate
Ohio University Music/Dance Library
sigmanohio.edu

> I have much writing that is important to me on my original MacSE. It
> is using system 6! (I know, I AM old....(sigh)) These are written in
> "Write Now".

Well, at least ClarisWorks 4 offers the options to open MacWrite and
WriteNow files right from the "File" menu. I don't see any reason why
ClarisWorks should not run in the Classic environment of MacOS X. If you
don't have ClarisWorks look at ebay, you might find it there.

SoundApp 2.7.2 lists Sound Designer II amongst the formats to convert from
or to....

Udo