Hi folks.
Me, asking again out of desperation...

Fay has been doing some file/disk housekeeping and found a few files from
the last century which she can't read and make sense of.

She thinks it was written in a text "thing..."

I've tried in StrongED, Zap etc, but they just display some sort of
document formatting, I think.

I've also tried, Imp Publisher, Style, Imp Junior and InterWord, and I
would try WordWise+ but I did have, but can't now find the WW+ emulator I
used to have, so I can't test that out.

The first line of the files start with...

‚'d@xV4 etc... (And in case Pluto excises the characters).

Hat
w ' d@ x V4 etc...

Anyone have any idea?

Thanks
Dave

--

Dave Triffid

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

Hi folks.
Me, asking again out of desperation...

Fay has been doing some file/disk housekeeping and found a few files from
the last century which she can't read and make sense of.

She thinks it was written in a text "thing..."

I've tried in StrongED, Zap etc, but they just display some sort of
document formatting, I think.

I've also tried, Imp Publisher, Style, Imp Junior and InterWord, and I
would try WordWise+ but I did have, but can't now find the WW+ emulator I used to have, so I can't test that out.

The first line of the files start with...

?'d@xV4 etc... (And in case Pluto excises the characters).

I vaguely remember '@xV4' being an Impression Style/Publisher header. I'm
not sure if there's a difference in filetype between the two, but I'd try
both. I think Junior used an application directory rather than single file
(at least I know Impression II did).

Theo

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In article <zSw*Im73z@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

Hi folks.
Me, asking again out of desperation...
Fay has been doing some file/disk housekeeping and found a few files
from the last century which she can't read and make sense of.

She thinks it was written in a text "thing..."

I've tried in StrongED, Zap etc, but they just display some sort of document formatting, I think.

I've also tried, Imp Publisher, Style, Imp Junior and InterWord, and I would try WordWise+ but I did have, but can't now find the WW+
emulator I used to have, so I can't test that out.

The first line of the files start with...

?'d@xV4 etc... (And in case Pluto excises the characters).

I vaguely remember '@xV4' being an Impression Style/Publisher header.
I'm not sure if there's a difference in filetype between the two, but
I'd try both. I think Junior used an application directory rather than single file (at least I know Impression II did).

Theo

Initially, I'd tried ImpDoc and bc5 as a file type, but at the time, that didn't do the business.

After I'd posted the above, I tried a lot of stuff to get her info out of
the files.

Eventually, and don't ask me what I did, I succeeded in getting Imp Style
to load the files and then resave the documents.

Considering the datestamp on the files it must have been when we were
using Imp Style, but that's a long time ago, so it's very vague now.

Yes, Junior did use the Appdir rather than a single file, but Style and Publisher had a Menu-File- option to "Save as a Single file".

I remember back then we did a lot of resaving old Junior appdir file out
of Imp Style to make them Single files.

Dave

--

Dave Triffid

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 8 Jan 2025 as I do recall,
Theo wrote:

Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

Hi folks.
Me, asking again out of desperation...

Fay has been doing some file/disk housekeeping and found a few files from the last century which she can't read and make sense of.

She thinks it was written in a text "thing..."

I've tried in StrongED, Zap etc, but they just display some sort of document formatting, I think.

I've also tried, Imp Publisher, Style, Imp Junior and InterWord, and I would try WordWise+ but I did have, but can't now find the WW+ emulator I used to have, so I can't test that out.

The first line of the files start with...

?'d@xV4 etc... (And in case Pluto excises the characters).

I vaguely remember '@xV4' being an Impression Style/Publisher header. I'm not sure if there's a difference in filetype between the two, but I'd try both.

My Impression Publisher files (dating back to 1997) all seem to have 00
78 56 34 at an offset of characters four to seven from the start of the
file (which displays as @xV4 in StrongED's dump mode). If you scroll
down they also tend to contain large numbers of zero bytes with
font/style names and then bits of readable text content.

You can try setting them to filetype &BC5 (ImpDoc) and seeing if they
will load into any version of Impression that accepts single files. The insides of Impression application-directory-style documents basically
look the same, and also contain the '@xV4' string near the beginning,
but are of filetype &D87 (DocData) and cannot be loaded by dragging them directly into Impression or by double-clicking on them.

If you've got one of these then you need the application directory to go
with it, which will have each separate chapter as a subdirectory
containing graphics and a file of type &D88 (Text). These contain the
main text of the document but do *not* start with the @xv4 string....


--
Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie ==

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from

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In message <vlmnec$2ue36$1@dont-email.me>
druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

On 08/01/2025 16:31, Dave wrote:

Fay has been doing some file/disk housekeeping and found a few files from
the last century which she can't read and make sense of.

She thinks it was written in a text "thing..."

I've tried in StrongED, Zap etc, but they just display some sort of
document formatting, I think.

I've also tried, Imp Publisher, Style, Imp Junior and InterWord, and I
would try WordWise+ but I did have, but can't now find the WW+ emulator I
used to have, so I can't test that out.

The first line of the files start with...

''d@xV4 etc... (And in case Pluto excises the characters).

Hat
w ' d@ x V4 etc...

Pretty meaningless, use the *dump command to display the file as bytes
and ascii and paste the first line in to the email.

Anyone have any idea?

There are a couple of old (26 bit only) programs called !Recognise and !TypeFind which may be able to identify the files, if you can find them.

---druck

I have !TypeFind 32 bit version.


--
Jean-Michel

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On 13/01/2025 19:10, Jean-Michel wrote:

In message <vlmnec$2ue36$1@dont-email.me>
druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

There are a couple of old (26 bit only) programs called !Recognise and
!TypeFind which may be able to identify the files, if you can find them.

---druck

I have !TypeFind 32 bit version.

Is it available to download from anywhere?

---druck

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article <45e9b4de5b.jmb@jmc.bruck.orange.fr>,
Jean-Michel <jmc.bruck@orange.fr> wrote:

[Snip]

I have !TypeFind 32 bit version.

As we are still working through Fay's old backups etc...

Do you have a URL from where !TypeFind might be available?

Thanks
Dave

--

Dave Triffid

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In message <vm3v36$21dqg$1@dont-email.me>
druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

On 13/01/2025 19:10, Jean-Michel wrote:

In message <vlmnec$2ue36$1@dont-email.me>
druck <news@druck.org.uk> wrote:

There are a couple of old (26 bit only) programs called !Recognise and
!TypeFind which may be able to identify the files, if you can find them. >>>
---druck

I have !TypeFind 32 bit version.

Is it available to download from anywhere?

---druck

Just uploaded here.

https://jeanmichelb.riscos.fr/TempFiles.html


--
Jean-Michel

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