Old files are mojibake

Everything related to our flagship word processor.
Post Reply
sardinops_99
Posts: 17
Joined: 2003-06-07 06:19:28

Old files are mojibake

Post by sardinops_99 »

Dear all, I opened some old Nisus rtf files that were japanese and English text but the Japanese is mojibake ie illegible like thisøÇÕímǡǃǢNjÇ∑ÅB
Anyway to make this legible? TIA
User avatar
martin
Official Nisus Person
Posts: 5227
Joined: 2002-07-11 17:14:10
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact:

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by martin »

The files you opened may or may not actually use the RTF data format. It's almost certain they are old "Classic" files from the days of Mac OS 9. The best option to transfer these files properly is to go back to the original source files, if you still have access to them. You want to archive/zip the files so that their resource fork (and font information) is intact, which Nisus Writer Pro can hopefully import with more success.

For more details on all of this, please see our FAQ on opening classic files. In the worst case, if you don't have the original files, or your legacy text uses non-standard text encodings, you may need to write a custom Nisus Writer macro to help you convert the garbled text to proper Unicode text.
sardinops_99
Posts: 17
Joined: 2003-06-07 06:19:28

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by sardinops_99 »

I think you're right. These were from 2000-2002 and have black icon. There used to be a old app called Kanjitext which would do the job but it has long since ceased to function.
sardinops_99
Posts: 17
Joined: 2003-06-07 06:19:28

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by sardinops_99 »

The info box says 'Nisus® 3.0 File Format'
sardinops_99
Posts: 17
Joined: 2003-06-07 06:19:28

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by sardinops_99 »

[attachment=0]Screenshot 2021-09-21 at 05.35.09.png[/attachment]
Attachments
Screenshot 2021-09-21 at 05.35.09.png
Screenshot 2021-09-21 at 05.35.09.png (77.65 KiB) Viewed 9632 times
User avatar
martin
Official Nisus Person
Posts: 5227
Joined: 2002-07-11 17:14:10
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact:

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by martin »

Is there any formatting at all in the file when you open it in Nisus Writer? That is, does your text have different fonts, colors, graphics, or anything like that? If not, then your file lost its resource fork as explained in the FAQ.

If your text uses standardized legacy text encodings from the OS 9 days, then it's possible there's an app that can help you convert it, but I'm not familiar with any, sorry. I can only recommend you craft a conversion macro as mentioned in the FAQ.

The best outcome with old files is to archive your original data files before transferring them to a modern Mac, so that Nisus Writer can import the full data with resource forks intact. That may allow automatic conversion of your old text.
sardinops_99
Posts: 17
Joined: 2003-06-07 06:19:28

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by sardinops_99 »

Thanks for your reply. Yes the old file does have different fonts, colors etc. Unfortunately that old Mac has long gone.
User avatar
Hamid
Posts: 777
Joined: 2007-01-17 03:25:42

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by Hamid »

Mojibake appears because the app cannot detect in which legacy text enoding the old file was saved.
You can try the following to help NWP apply the correct legacy encoding to open the old file:

Make a duplicate of your file in the Finder and add .txt file extension to the file.
Then in the NWP Open dialog selct the file.
When the file has .txt extension, in NWP Open dialog, you can select Japanese from the Text Encoding drop down menu to open the file in the legacy encoding.

I hope this works to recover the text at least.
text encoding.jpg
text encoding.jpg (19.33 KiB) Viewed 9526 times
sardinops_99
Posts: 17
Joined: 2003-06-07 06:19:28

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by sardinops_99 »

Brilliant. Thanks it works!
Vanceone
Posts: 211
Joined: 2013-05-03 07:06:31

Re: Old files are mojibake

Post by Vanceone »

For other types of these issues, it is possible using Sheepsaver or Basilisk to run an old "virtual" System 9, 8, or 7 machine, which can install classic Nisus. I frequently do this to access the very old WordPerfect Mac 3.5e, which allows me to open, sometimes, PC wordperfect files colleagues send me. More importantly, it allows me to save in a WordPerfect format I can send them. I will write and draft in Nisus, open it in the old WordPerfect Mac, clean up the file a bit, save as the Wordperfect format and send it off.

So this is cumbersome, but it allows me to access all the old school formats. I have an old copy of Nisus there too (Nisus version 6 for classic really was a fantastic program!). And, in fact, a Nisus Writer 6.5 install, while not containing Unicode capabilities, does have a macro to convert to and from Unicode. So you should be able to run Nisus 6.5 and convert your filesi into Unicode, which should be easily opened.

Not sure if all of these steps are worth it... but it's possible, I believe!
Post Reply