On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 5:32 PM, Bill Janssen jans...@parc.com wrote:
At PARC, we have some digital documents from the early '90's in FrameMaker
version 1 and 2. But we have no versions of FrameMaker suitable for opening
them, and re-rendering them in a more accessible format. I'm wondering if
others have faced this issue in making archives accessible, and if so, what
they did about it?
Bill
Well, initially I wondered--assumed--the files would be too old to be read,
but after Googling, it appears Frame Technologies, and later Adobe, has been
extremely good at preserving as much compatibility as possible, though the
files if not in an interchange format, can still be finicky to open. Which
then makes me wonder, is it the lack of FrameMaker software, itself, or have
you encountered errors opening such files? Reminds me of efforts in
preserving old video games, we really should try to preserve the ability to
run old software too, despite copyright, particularly where vendors don't
exist any more. (Unlike Adobe, in this example.)
Back to opening old FM files, we have to potentially deal with the change
from FrameRoman text encoding to Unicode in versions after 7.2, but this may
still be in the realm of possibility. Posts from 2010 on the Adobe forums
say:
Just today I found a CD-ROM with FrameMaker 3 demo files (for the
Macintosh).
The problem with seemingly missing fonts can be solved by editing the font
mappings in maker.ini.
But the problem with missing characters cannot be solved this way. Just
last week I had a call from someone using very old fonts, which in part do
not follow standard Windows codepage rules. My recommendation:
1) Open the files with any pre-Unicode version of FrameMaker (all versions
including 7.2). Don’t care about missing fonts.
2) Make sure your system shows Fonts like Arial CYR in FrameMaker’s font
list. If not, add the Russian keyboard setting (in Control Panels, Regional
Settings) to your machine.
3) Try to apply Arial CYR to the text.
a) all characters appear fine: lucky you!
b) still missing characters: They have to be corrected.
4) Open the cleaned files with FrameMaker 9 and you should be all set and
prepared for further work.
From: http://forums.adobe.com/message/3048805
Seeing FM3 files opening in FM7 or later versions, made me then wonder if
having a copy of FM1 or 2 would really be necessary to open such files. Sure
enough, if you get a message saying a file can't be opened with this version
of FrameMaker, that usually means it's a newer-version file:
FM is usually quite good about backwards compatibility. The message usually
indicates that you've gotten files that are a newer release than the 7.0
that you are using. You'll need to have the files sent to you in MIF format
or saved with backwards compatibility to FM7 , if they are from FM8.
...
If you you need to know the version that created the FM file, CAREFULLY
open it in a word processor or text editor. The first line will be something
like: MakerFile 9.0H. DO NOT SAVE THE FILE. In this case, it indicates
FrameMaker 9.0.
From: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440870
Again in 2010, this time on a thread involving errors in opening FMv3 files,
someone tried opening a file that failed to open in v5, in v4, but it didn't
work in either. Apparently this version also predates a heroic open option
which may try to bypass errors and read it anyway:
Got your files, but unfortunately I've been unable to open them in FM4. When
I try I'm told that they are damaged. I tried using a heroic open, but that
doesn't seem to have existed in FM4 (when I use it I end up with a H in
the current document, which indicates that the Esc o H key sequence isn't
defined).
I suppose that it *is* possible that these files are in fact corrupt. When
I open them in a text editor, they have the basic chunks of stuff that you'd
expect, but there could be some extra binary bits at the end that may be
causing the problem. FM4 doesn't have a SaveAs FM3 option so I can't
compare a good file against yours. You can open them in a text editor and
pick out some of the words in plain text, but that's probably not terribly
useful.
And later someone else named Frank Stearns chimes in saying:
I came late to the conversation, but sorry to say your files are probably
corrupt.
I recall opening FM3 files with FM5.5, and I'm pretty sure those opens even
worked with FM7. (Only had a second to look on our main system here just
now; found some 16 year old FM4 files that open fine in 7.2; I know we have
FM2.1 and FM3 files out on optical media somewhere but did not enough time
to go look at the moment).
Frame has historically been fairly good about cleanly opening old version
files with newer version FM, even skipping several generations, so that
probably wasn't an issue in your case.
The side-topic question I have (given that we're in the middle of trying
find the best passive solution for
