Meaning the black-rectangle-with-"exec" icon and type "UNIX executable
file"?  Nothing needs to be translated in that case—your files are
exactly the same as they always were.  The system just doesn't know
what they are, and what that icon and type really means is "it's not
any format I can understand and it's got no extension so I'm going to
_assume_ it's an executable."  So then what you need to do is _tell_
the system, by putting back extensions.  If you don't know what type a
file is, try dragging it to several different apps on the Dock while
holding Option and Command, which will force those apps to _try_ to
open it.  Word opens just about any kind of text-based file as well as
any Office-type file (i'll open the appropriate app for you).  Then
try any other apps you use frequently.

Or, though I don't think this'll work on its own, you could try a free
utility called Onyx, which can reset the system's file associations.
If the files don't have extensions, that may not help because the
system may still not be able to figure things out.  There's also a
prefpane called RCDefaultApp for setting file associations, but it may
not be able to help you either if the system can't tell the difference
between a Word file and a PDF, say, because they don't have extensions
or any of the other identification mechanisms.

Hopefully this will be helpful...  Solutions to this sort of problem
are hard to explain because it's hard to know exactly what will work
and what won't.  I've dealt with this sort of thing before but can't
know exactly what your issue is or how to fix it.  It all hinges on
whether the system just thinks every kind of file is a UNIX exec or
whether it genuinely can't tell the difference between them.  Heck, I
don't even know if the first of those two scenarios is possible.

...Have you tried restarting?  Sometimes that fixes little glitches
pretty nicely.

On Aug 16, 7:05 pm, ALADNAM <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Many of my files became illegible, converted into Unix  files.
> I understood that Blacktree: Quicksilve could translate Unix to plain
> English but I can't figure out how.
>
> Can anybody show me how?

Reply via email to