I have about a dozen files originally written between 1989 and 1995 in WriteNow (on an ancient Mac). I have seen something online to say that LibreOffice [Writer] can read WriteNow files [i.e. that a suitable filter exists]. How do I go about doing that? I think it was WriteNow 4.0.2 but I am not sure. The files are still around, but neither WriteNow nor the ancient Mac is still extant. I am now using LibreOffice on a Mac Mini running Mac OS 26.3.1 Tahoe.
- Install LibreOffice
- Open LibreOffice and from there Click File > Open, navigate to the WriteNow files, select one and click Open
Do they open OK?. If so, then you could Save As another filename
LibreOffice is already installed. Using File > Open produces a Text Import wizard which seems to assume the target is CSV format. I’m guessing I don’t have the right filter installed. [Not sure how to install additional filters.]
Update: I found the filter and explicitly selected it. It came up with an error message.
You might need to give LibreOffice full disc access first.
OK, tried that. Now the error message says the file is corrupt. An attempt to repair it (on a copy) failed instantly.
Of the original 12 files, I have succeeded (over the last few weeks) in converting two to .DOC and another two (on another occasion and using a different tool) to .DOCX .
I also have hard copies of some of the files, including 4 of the remaining 8 files. I have scanned one of them into PDF form, but the intention would then be to OCR the results and do a lot of proofreading to produce an editable version so I can update the various documents. Or splash out for the full version of Acrobat.
The content is a mathematical magazine which I used to edit. So proofreading would be both necessary and nontrivial. And there are 12 issues, at about 24-30 pages per issue.
It is possible that the equations are causing the problem for the filter. I know that for Lotus WordPro, the filter only gets the text, ignoring images.
Can you open the file in a text only editor? You might be able to extract the text, then you only have to recreate the equations.
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OCR is a possibility, scanners or scanner/printers often come with a basic OCR program installed and that might be adequate. Mac OS comes with Live Text which has basic OCR abilities. You could search for OCR open source for Mac and see if anything comes up.
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I recently scanned in 50 or so magazines for a society I belong to. I used commercially available OCR software to create searchable pdf (text under image) but I did not correct any errors. Probably, any equations were rendered as either images or as gibberish but the documents as a whole became far more useful.
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If you want to create fresh documents, then scan, OCR, copy and paste as unformatted text. Reformat and layout the text as needed. The standard for OCR now is to put the text in frames so they can be laid out as original. This makes it very difficult to reuse the content.
Yes, Filestar got me two of the four successful translations. But it failed on the other files.
I have something called TextSniper which seems to be quite good at picking out text from images. I haven’t got as far as trying it out on the PDF captures.
I have also fed the remaining files to a hex editor, so I can see stretches of text (a bit of an “Eric Morecambe edition”: all the right sections of words but not necessarily in the right order).
Meanwhile, on another tack, I have a (hilarious) hardcopy [a book from Amazon!] of the 1st edition of the Köchel catalogue of Mozart’ works. What makes it hilarious is that somebody put it through OCR and made no attempt at proofreading the results. It’s in German, and I see Russian characters and all sorts. And every entry in the original starts with an “incipit”, i.e. musical notation of the first couple of bars … which the OCR totally mangles. OCR has its limits, and proofreading is absolutely necessary.
You might also look at Rescribe OCR if your current tools are not meeting your needs.
AI is now progressing rapidly and many similar problems are being solved well.