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OS X app that can open WriteNow docs?
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jszrules
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Oct 22, 2007, 12:20 AM
 
Hi, is there any OS X word processor out there that would be able to open old WriteNow docs? Just trying to salvage all my really old stuff. Thanks.
     
P
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Oct 22, 2007, 10:11 AM
 
Try Appleworks, I think it will do it.
     
jszrules  (op)
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Oct 22, 2007, 11:11 PM
 
Thanks for the suggestion, but AppleWorks didn't recognize my old WriteNow files. Which is fine with me, since I don't think AppleWorks would run on Intel anyway. Speaking of, I should probably add that as a requirement... "Is there any Universal Binary word processor that would be able to open old WriteNow docs?" Thanks.
     
Cadaver
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Oct 23, 2007, 01:21 AM
 
OS X for Intel-based Macs will run any PowerPC application. While it might not run as fast as it would on a PPC processor, it will work. Appleworks will run on your Intel-based Mac.

As far as salvaging - if you have access to a Mac that will run WriteNow and can get a hold of an appropriate version of Adobe Acrobat, you could print/export your files as PDFs.
     
Cadaver
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Oct 23, 2007, 01:27 AM
 
Just found this... looks like it might do exactly what you want. On MacOS X no less.
MacLinkPlus Deluxe File Types Supported: Convert and Decode Windows Files On Your Mac.
     
Big Mac
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Oct 23, 2007, 01:27 AM
 
I think the best thing to do with WriteNow files is probably to export them as RTF. As for MacLinkPlus, it took a real dive in its later classic incarnations. I didn't know it ever made the jump to OS X. However, back when it briefly shipped with the OS (OS 8 I believe), it was an incredible file translator.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
P
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Oct 24, 2007, 10:23 AM
 
I checked, and while Appleworks 5 supports Writenow (though XTND), Appleworks 6 does not. Appleworks 5 of course only works under Classic.

Well, I guess the best you can do now is to run Writenow inside an emulator and resave the files as something else. The upside is that Writenow was small and light enough to run on a 68k Mac, so an emulator like Basilisk or vMac will be enough to do it,
     
Thorzdad
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Oct 24, 2007, 02:15 PM
 
How many files are we talking? I have WriteNow installed on an old PowerComputing clone. I'd be more than willing to do the conversion for you, as long as we're not talking umpteen hundreds.

FWIW, I loved WriteNow, back in the day.
     
jszrules  (op)
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Oct 24, 2007, 09:17 PM
 
Thanks for the offer, but I do have Classic running on my machine so I can still open my files in WriteNow. My issue is that when I get a new iMac very soon after Leopard's debut, I would like to open these documents in OS X. Based on what everyone has said, it looks like I have three options:

1) Export to RTF
2) Use MacLinkPlus
3) Open with Acrobat and save as PDF - it doesn't look like I have Acrobat in OS 9, but this method would generate read-only files anyway, so it's probably not that desireable

Which of these options do you think is best? Thanks.
     
Thorzdad
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Oct 25, 2007, 08:04 AM
 
If you want to retain any editability, I'd say export to RTF.
     
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Oct 25, 2007, 02:00 PM
 
Of course it depends on the complexity of the documents - how much you'd lose - but it seems like going to RTF is the best bet,
     
jszrules  (op)
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Oct 31, 2007, 10:17 PM
 
Thanks for all the advice so far. So it appears I have over 600 WriteNow documents to convert to RTF. Is there a faster way of doing this other than opening each document, saving as RTF, and adding a .rtf extension to each document? Obviously, WriteNow ain't compatible with Automator! Thanks.
     
jszrules  (op)
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Nov 2, 2007, 10:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by jszrules View Post
Thanks for all the advice so far. So it appears I have over 600 WriteNow documents to convert to RTF. Is there a faster way of doing this other than opening each document, saving as RTF, and adding a .rtf extension to each document? Obviously, WriteNow ain't compatible with Automator! Thanks.
I read online that it shouldn't take too long to write an AppleScript that loops through a specified folder, opens WriteNows docs, and saves them as RTF. Since I have never written an AppleScript before, I do not trust myself, so I would really appreciate it if anyone can get me started... thanks.
     
Big Mac
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Apr 22, 2008, 03:18 PM
 
Now that Classic is dead in Leopard, I bet a shareware author could really make a nice profit by providing a viewer/converter app for WriteNow files. I can't imagine the files would be too hard to translate.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
CharlesS
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Apr 22, 2008, 04:16 PM
 
A nice profit? Do you really suppose there are that many people out there that need to convert old WriteNow files? It sounds like the kind of thing that would get maybe 1 or 2 sales.

Also, to reverse-engineer the format, you'd need to have some way to make WriteNow files, and I'd guess old copies of WriteNow would be fairly hard to come by nowadays.

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Thorzdad
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Apr 22, 2008, 04:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
...I'd guess old copies of WriteNow would be fairly hard to come by nowadays.
Sell you mine!
     
Big Mac
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Apr 22, 2008, 04:33 PM
 
Yeah, it's not too hard to come by. It's such a tiny app, and it's abandon-ware, so. . .

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Chuckit
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Apr 22, 2008, 04:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
Now that Classic is dead in Leopard, I bet a shareware author could really make a nice profit by providing a viewer/converter app for WriteNow files. I can't imagine the files would be too hard to translate.
MacLinkPlus, mentioned above, is such a program. I don't use it, but it does claim OS X compatibility.
Chuck
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Apr 23, 2008, 09:27 AM
 
Something that would be very cool would be a Quicklook plugin that uses the old XTND translators. That way you'd at least get the ability to read many old documents.
     
CharlesS
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Apr 23, 2008, 07:21 PM
 
Do the XTND translators have PowerPC / 68k / Classic code in them though? If so, such a thing wouldn't be feasible.

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mosk
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Aug 29, 2008, 05:41 AM
 
Just a note for anyone else that needs to get at text within an old WriteNow document on OSX:

You can use Word 2008 to extract the text (don't know about earlier versions).

To do this from within Word:

1. Choose File menu > Open.
2. Select the file and click Open. Word will then present a small "Convert File" dialog.
3. Choose the intuitively named "Recover Text From Any File" and click OK.
4. Enjoy your gloriously extracted 1997-era text.

The above works on some simple text files I have. I haven't tried it on anything too complicated. Also, it leaves some post-conversion artifacts, but hey, it works.
     
Big Mac
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Aug 29, 2008, 06:32 AM
 
Wow, great to know.

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tooki
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Aug 29, 2008, 10:16 AM
 
FWIW, I used to use MacLinkPlus back in the day, back when Mac and Windows word processors didn't use the same file formats. It's an outstanding converter -- and probably the highest version numbered app I'm aware of. (It's at version 16 now, IIRC.)
     
Big Mac
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Aug 29, 2008, 10:49 AM
 
The only reason I dismiss MacLinkPlus is because, while it rocked under OS 8, the newer OS 9 compatible version totally sucked; I assumed that the OS X port probably sucked too. If you look at the product site, the one window screen shot they show looks like it's from OS X 10.0. But if you say it works well then I'll give it another chance.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
SVass
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Aug 29, 2008, 11:43 AM
 
MacLink Plus has a File View option that displays the text in files of any nature. As was said about the same capability in Word, it ain't pretty.
sam
     
ibook_steve
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Aug 29, 2008, 01:59 PM
 
This thread totally takes me back. I need to buy a USB floppy drive so I can get my old college docs off my countless old floppy disks. Many of those files are probably WriteNow format. And I'll have to visit the attic to get all those disks!

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GregWormald
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Feb 14, 2009, 05:31 AM
 
A solution!!!! HOORAY!!!
Get a copy of COI 4.0.1.
Put all your data and applications on a virtual CD and mount it on your desktop.
Put the .dmg file for the size of HD you want into your /users/shared folder.
Open COI.
Transfer docs and apps into the HD on the System 9 desktop.
Use as System 9.
Open document, save as: MSWord type. Transfer manually to "Unix" directory.
It is now in your /users/shared folder.
I just got this working today to convert some old docs.
Greg
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Charles Bouldin
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Feb 15, 2009, 02:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by GregWormald View Post
A solution!!!! HOORAY!!!
Get a copy of COI 4.0.1.
Put all your data and applications on a virtual CD and mount it on your desktop.
Put the .dmg file for the size of HD you want into your /users/shared folder.
Open COI.
Transfer docs and apps into the HD on the System 9 desktop.
Use as System 9.
Open document, save as: MSWord type. Transfer manually to "Unix" directory.
It is now in your /users/shared folder.
I just got this working today to convert some old docs.
Greg
Intel iMac 2.8 Duo, System 10.5.6
Interesting. I had to figure out what "COI" was. For those that don't know, it is "Classic on Intel", a bundle of the Sheepsaver program that runs OS9 on Intel hardware, -and- a copy of a Mac ROM and OS9. So, COI is a nearly one-click install of OS9 on Intel hardware. A little googling will let you find a place to download this.

This is not strictly "legal", but I doubt that Apple cares much these days about what people do with OS9. So, this is a solution to a much larger question about how to run any OS9 program that you may still need/want. It is also an interesting look back at the classic MacOS.

So, my MBP now runs 4 OS's: OSX, Vista, XP and OS9.....not that I do much with anything except OSX.
     
Big Mac
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Feb 15, 2009, 03:55 PM
 
Thank you for explaining that post, Charles. It's good to know that such a solution exist. I wonder if some could also make a COPPC.

Seeing this thread get bumped reminded me that I bought MacLinkPlus Deluxe when it was going at a special rate but had not tested out its WriteNow compatibility. It seems that although it can recognize WriteNow files, the current version does not provide any WriteNow specific translator. However, the RTF translator works well enough for simple documents.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Black Box
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Feb 26, 2009, 10:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by mosk View Post
Just a note for anyone else that needs to get at text within an old WriteNow document on OSX:

You can use Word 2008 to extract the text (don't know about earlier versions).

To do this from within Word:

1. Choose File menu > Open.
2. Select the file and click Open. Word will then present a small "Convert File" dialog.
3. Choose the intuitively named "Recover Text From Any File" and click OK.
4. Enjoy your gloriously extracted 1997-era text.

The above works on some simple text files I have. I haven't tried it on anything too complicated. Also, it leaves some post-conversion artifacts, but hey, it works.
Mosk, thank you very much for posting this option. Existing formatting (tabs, bolds, etc) are all shot to hell after the conversion but the text is in tact! There are some artifacts at the end and a mention of Write Now/Table Style/Font at the top of converted files. Aside from that, it works like a charm. What a relief...really wasn't looking forward to individually converting my 400+ WriteNow docs to rtfs so they work on my new MacBook.
     
bgardner
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Mar 9, 2009, 11:02 AM
 
Same with Word 2004.

Best conversion tool (no odd artifacts) is MacLinkPlus (now in v.16 for OSX). Simple and effective to bring WriteNow files into Word or another application in OSX
     
Big Mac
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Mar 9, 2009, 11:58 AM
 
But they took out the WriteNow translators. I had decent success with the RTF translator for WriteNow files, though. What translator did you use, bgardner?

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
   
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