Mastodawn

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 6, 2024

Got down to #author stuff, now that I'm retired and can devote time to the #business of #writing #fiction. First order of business: catalog the unsold novels from after the burn out that need revision and rewrites.

Turns out that disconnecting my Mac from my work VPN messed up my folders. I had somehow mapped (don't know the Mac term) my work Windows computer folders to the Mac, and when I look in documents it tries to find it on the network and fails. If I reboot, so long as I go directly from my user's directory to documents directory, I'm good. If I click on Documents in Finder, it redirects and I'm screwed.

First thing I did was copy all my writing folders to the desktop. At least I've lost none of my old novels and short work.

I thought there were 7 completed books, and I said so online. There are actually 9, three that form a trilogy and one novel with a sequel in the mix. There are two incomplete novels.

Some works are older than others. Pages refuses to open one novel from 1996, a fun space opera that possibly has the highest chance of early sales. I haven't tried the others. Now I gotta install Word, of which I am not a fan, and investigate programs that'll open the really old files. If anyone wants to chime in with suggestions, please do! (I can always find someone with a Windows machine if need be.) Putting Google on TODO. I actually have original copies of chapters from my Apple ][ days, but thankfully I updated those to the Mac and to a new millennium version of Word in what were my PowerPC days.

Incidentally, there really are three novellas in good shape.What surprises me though? There looks like about 15 short stories, many complete because I see multiple submissions in the various folders. I completely forgot about these, and was sure I never wrote short-form.

Baby steps, I guess.

#writingLife #writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jan 6, 2024

@sfwrtr You might find that Libreoffice is actually better at reading old Word files than Word.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

"You might find that Libreoffice is actually better at reading old Word files than Word."

Yep. Word can't read files prior to 1994.I finally got my links to my writing ironed out and content backed up into the cloud (what a pain), though it is in Time Machine, so I installed the newest Mac version of #LibreOffice.

I opened a 1992 file. Check.
I opened a 1989 file. Well, all the lowercase "a"s are converted to circumflex characters, but I can work with that.

I figured out (finally) how to search for dates on my Mac and found a story treatment named "The Revenger" (no extension, Mac naturally!). The date is Mar 25, 1986.

It opened with a few box characters, but otherwise readable. It looks like my attempt at an Andre Norton type SF space opera. It even opened "Tree Castle", which is or probably was a Mac Draw document. It was dated Jan 1, 1986. It's my oldest document. I've a screen cap below of the mentioned documents open in LibreOffice.

Yeah, for document conversion, LibreOffice rocks. The content of some of these old documents is amateurish; weird since I was already published.

Still... No lost IP. This is a good thing.

cc: @taur10 @alan

#writing #writer #author #writersofmastodon #writingcommunity #fiction #writinglife #fiction #sf #ScienceFiction #spaceopera

Guitarsophist Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan LibreOffice can even open WordPerfect 4.0 files. The only thing it doesn't open is Pages, or at least it didn't last time I tried.

Alexandra Jan 7, 2024

@jredlund @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan REALLY?! I was just about to trash a bunch of .wpd files which kills me b/c much of my life was in WordPerfect. Thanks for the tip!

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 7, 2024

@alexandrasweetie @jredlund @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan

"REALLY?! [It converts old word perfect files?] I was just about to trash a bunch of .wpd files..."

Reportedly. Please try and report back.

I'm so happy my little adventure helped someone!

wlach Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @alexandrasweetie @jredlund @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan Fwiw myself and a few collaborators wrote the original version of the WordPerfect parser for LibreOffice 20 years ago. Bit of a passion project for me when I had just finished school. It should still work! https://libwpd.sf.net

libwpd - a library for importing and exporting WordPerfect (tm) documents

Guitarsophist Jan 8, 2024

@wlach @sfwrtr @alexandrasweetie @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan How interesting! It allowed me to open my dissertation, which was very handy.

Tuuli M. (domestic goblin)Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @alexandrasweetie @jredlund @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan

It opened some old .wp5 files I had around! Understandably, some of the formatting isn't there, but the text is.

Guitarsophist Jan 7, 2024

@alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan I stayed in WordPerfect until Word took over university and corporate discourse. WordPerfect zigged when it should have zagged. The choice was whether to do a Windows version or an OSX version, and they mistakenly went with the latter. Word and its massive bloated dumbness have ruled ever since. But we have LibreOffice!

Alexandra Jan 7, 2024

@jredlund @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan 100% the same. I was using it doing legal work for as long as I could. Still annoyed by Word every day, especially the 'outline' function. WYSIWIG is the only way to go.

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 7, 2024

@jredlund @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 WordPerfect's problem on Windows was thinking that just because they had developed drivers for a huge array of printers, that would be a barrier for entry for Word. Meanwhile, Windows just kept on adding printers while WP took >10m to load printer drivers I no longer cared about. They would have been better off donating the drivers to Microsoft and focusing on being the best word processor.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 7, 2024

@alan @jredlund @alexandrasweetie @stevendbrewer @taur10

"They would have been better off donating the drivers to Microsoft and focusing on being the best word processor."

The concept of "open sourcing" APIs etc. as a business strategy is something that didn't happen until (to my recollection), last decade. In general, it's been to force standards out of proprietary software, but it's seems to work well. (Correct me if you think that started happening earlier.)

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @jredlund @alexandrasweetie @stevendbrewer @taur10
I don't mean open sourcing it, I mean dumping the whole mess of intellectual property on Microsoft's doorstep. MS probably wouldn't use the actual code, but WP was so focused on "WE HAS MORE PRINTERS!!!" that they forgot to stay ahead of Word.

A ten minute delay every time you started the application up? Sorry guys, that's *my* productivity gone. I'll start using this Word thing even if it is shittier. A classic case of wrong focus.

Guitarsophist Jan 7, 2024

@alan @sfwrtr @alexandrasweetie @stevendbrewer @taur10 I never experienced a 10-minute delay loading WP for Windows, but I thought that the graphical DOS version was actually better. Knowing Microsoft, however, if there was such a delay, it might have been something Windows did by design. It would be easy for them to detect that a competitor's product was loading and throw some wrenches into the code.

Liam Proven Jan 8, 2024

@jredlund @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan Do you mean they did the *former*?

You can run Classic MacOS WordPerfect under OS X, even on Arm.

https://mendelson.org/wpdos/mac-intel-alternate.html

WPDOS - WordPerfect for the Mac on Intel Macs - Alternate Version

Guitarsophist Jan 8, 2024

@lproven @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan Sorry, I meant OS/2 not OSX. OS/2 is the IBM operating system that fizzled in the marketplace.

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 8, 2024

@jredlund @lproven @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 This is triggering Token Ring PTSD. ;)

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 8, 2024

@jredlund @lproven @alexandrasweetie @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan

OS/2 and token ring, all in one thread. Oh my!.

Company I worked for, thinking itself married to Big Blue (IBM), fielded a major product (long sunsetted) to OS/2 before it "fizzled." I got to work on the NT then Windows port, often in a savior role. R&D without foresight wanted compatibility, so the made the same code support both, then transmogrified process-oriented code to threaded, then finally stripped the OS/2 out of the codebase. Should have simply rewrote for the new platform and sacrificed a year to get robust results. Wasn't allowed. Really tough for the developer tasked with making the code run without crashing. Me.

There's some PTSD there.

Ah, the good ole bad days. 😋

Kai Jan 8, 2024

@alexandrasweetie @jredlund @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan

Or you can try fire up a dosbox and run professional write https://winworldpc.com/product/professional-write/30

It is quite small and can open a lot of obscured formats of the era, and then convert to other format. As far as I can recall, it support saving as RTF, that can be easily open by most modern softwares.

The last time I used it was in early 2000s so I can't remember exactly which formats are supported.

Professional Write 3.0

Professional Write, from Software Publishing Corporation, was a popular word processor for home use during the late 80s and early 90s. It features an easy to use menu system and an integrated spell checker. Professional Write was a revamp and replacement for SPC's earlier PFS:Write.

WinWorld

Guitarsophist Jan 8, 2024

@Kai @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan Does anyone still have a working DOS box around? I haven't had one since the late 80's. I used to teach PC-Write in computer labs on dual floppy green screen IBM XTs though.

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 8, 2024

@jredlund @Kai @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 There's software (called, unsurprisingly "DosBox") that you can use to run the old stuff.

Guitarsophist Jan 8, 2024

@alan @Kai @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 I see! I didn't know that. It may come in handy someday.

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 8, 2024

@jredlund @Kai @alexandrasweetie @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 I mean seriously, how lame would the retro gaming experience be without starting at a C:\> prompt first? 😂

David Gerard Jan 8, 2024

@jredlund @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan LO has opened a Pages file for me recently - a bit messy, but all the text and comments were there

Guitarsophist Jan 8, 2024

@davidgerard @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan That is cool. Before I retired, students used to submit papers in all kinds of formats and LibreOffice could read most of them. I kept telling them not to submit Pages files, but to convert them to something I could open. Of course, being students, they still submitted Pages files. I read those on my iPad, in Pages.

trelane Jan 8, 2024

@jredlund @sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan This is a thing Apple is most qualified to solve.

I won't hold my breath, though.

Seph Harrison Jan 8, 2024

@trelane @alan @jredlund @stevendbrewer @sfwrtr IIRC, Pages files like DOCX are just a container, though Apple was a bit trickier with theirs, so it might take a bit before it's reverse engineered.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 9, 2024

Unsupported ancient old #Mac word processor formats were a real issue. Fortunately, #LibreOffice, and their adventurous programmers, solved this for me. I thank them.

Pages files like DOCX are just a container, though Apple was a bit trickier...

RS replies with mild sarcasm to the word "trickier":

You wanna /read/ a #Pages file outside of Pages or from another Mac program? #Apple provides an open method for that: It's called #scripting: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/script-to-convert-apple-pages-files-to-word-pages.2268488/

Outside of the Mac, you're stuck digging through a zip file with pictures, text, and... stuff..

Apple's thing is to ensure for the vast majority of their users that their software works all the time, every time. As a ex-programmer, I respect that. If that means controlling file integrity by being the only /writer/ of the file format, so be it. Keeping the format secret is a way to achieve that, which sadly means you can't write a program to read it. You REALLY don't want to debug what turns out to be a crap programmer's mistakes. Most users are as interested in the power user stuff we're interested in as they are in learning how to change the oil on their car.

cc: @jredlund @stevendbrewer

Script to convert Apple Pages files to WORD pages?

All my clients use MS WORD. I like Apple Pages but I don't like the way I have to "export" Pages files to convert them to WORD format. Is there an idiot-proof script with simple invocation directions I can steal to automate by simple invocation the conversion of my Pages files to WORD files...

MacRumors Forums

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer
OMG I just opened a WordPerfect doc from 1992, no problems. I have but the vaguest of memories of this, other than it appears to have been posted to a USENET writing group... and is seems to not suck.

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer ...and I suspect it's not my work either LOL.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 7, 2024

@alan @stevendbrewer @taur10

"...I suspect [the story I just opened is] not my work..."

Sleuthing required! Pronto! Just don't online it.

That said, that first document I opened might be in Mac Write, a Claris product. Though I am unsure of the dates, that might've been just after I got my first Mac, and possibly before I bought my first copy of Word. Kind of amazing!

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer
Well... it's got my pseudonymous copyright, including a date (with timestamp) that's 20 minutes away from the file modification date, so I guess it *is* mine. The file starts quote-replying "CW" who asked a question about disturbing scenes, and one possible decoding of the eight character filename is "reply to CW".
However, it's sort of a vaguely supernatural horror short. Definitely not my genre! Maybe it should be... 😱

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @taur10 @alan I'm so glad it worked for you!

Seph Harrison Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @alan @stevendbrewer Gotta love open source, usually people who need something that either isn't available, or costs too much, so they fix it themselves.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 7, 2024

@taur10 @alan @stevendbrewer
I do like it when they fix issues, though statistically speaking, for the few open source projects I've used and filed bug reports for, only one item got fixed after a few years. Often I get a snitty reply that suggests I fix it myself. Not implying everyone or even a small fraction of OS devs have that attitude, but the fixing of other's issues is pretty low priority. Of course, I got the same attitude of M$. But then, it's M$. Apple is a bit better (only a bit).

Pardon the rant. Retired dev recently forced as a last project to work on Open Source Zowe implementations—but no longer working!

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @taur10 @stevendbrewer I get that "you fix it" attitude rarely and my response is typically along the lines of "ok, can you create a branch? I'm gonna need to port this to Visual Basic first" [you want dev attitude, I got dev attitude 😉 ]. I've been on strictly volunteer projects though, and a lot of it depends on how many users a bug affects and if the original dev is still contributing or not.

In the case of LibreOffice, they've got enough funding to hire people so bugs get fixed.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 7, 2024

@alan @taur10 @stevendbrewer

"ok, can you create a branch? I'm gonna need to port this to Visual Basic first"

😅 Seriously, I do git it. There are many nations out there: #Windows, #Linux, #Mac, #zos and languages like #BASIC and #APL.

"I get that "you fix it" attitude rarely... "

I'm glad to hear it. But even asking me to branch is beyond my pay grade, and of most of the user base's comprehension. Neither the spouse or grannie are going to get this.

I was working with open source #Zowe stuff for three years, but then the Open #Mainframe Project fielded a mandatory conformance project I had to contribute to. The .md instructions were so bad, I had to rewrite them (RS is an #Author). In any case, they required me to do a #GitHub "pull request" to check-in my contribution (a json file) and for the .md file.

/RS.exe crashed at that point./

I pawned the project off on one of my Linuxy coworkers. Open source #programming is likely something people get really used to, but if you are a mainframer, Javascript and C programmer, or a Windows programmer, that's simply is Greek and is just one more thing to learn when I have no time because I have a dozen things to get done first.

Shoot. Ranted again. #ADHD Please forgive me!

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @taur10 @stevendbrewer You are not alone. Adapting to git is a pain in the ass, especially for old fart coders like us, let alone non-coders. I seriously wish Linus Torvalds liked Mecurial better. Similar distributed model, but IMO about 10 times easier to understand.

Rant on, rant on...

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 8, 2024

@alan @taur10 @stevendbrewer
For local/remote LAN stuff, I just used Eclipse's built-in, and more recently, VS Code's built in. Code even works with GitHub, but this "pull request" thing just broke me.

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @taur10 @stevendbrewer The nomenclature is {set generosity=max} not intuitive. How "ask a remote repo to merge your changes" turned into "pull" is beyond me, but there it is.

Deirdre Saoirse Moen Jan 9, 2024

@alan @sfwrtr @taur10 @stevendbrewer

Huh, as an old fart coder, I find git the most comprehensible system I’ve used in the post “print a new copy and date stamp it” era.

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jan 9, 2024

@deirdresm @alan @sfwrtr @taur10 I can use git in very simplistic ways, personally. But I've never been able to wrap my head around using it as part of a collaborative workflow. I'm sure I could figure it out if I had to, but luckily those days are past me.

Seph Harrison Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @alan @stevendbrewer I meant more along the lines of they fix the availability problem, creating software for problems where the solution isn't available.

Paul Will Gamble

🇨🇦Jul 24, 2024

@sfwrtr @taur10 @alan @stevendbrewer

What was working on the Zowe project/team like overall?

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jul 24, 2024

@paulywill @taur10 @alan @stevendbrewer I want to be nice, because the people I met were. And dedicated. I worked to build Zowe applications for the CLI and an iframe app for the Zowe Desktop, which I think they've renamed to zlux. The idea that having the devs leave comments in the code would generate documentation IMHO was wrong headed and caused me endless headache. Weeks, months, for what should have taken days—with the code base changing and depricating for a conservative industry needed stable APIs and simple straightforward doc, like Zowe for Dummies or an O'Reilly. I believe adoption has suffered outside the niche community as a result. The devs know what they were doing, but the application programmers were left in the cold or to read the code. Nice kit, once I got it, which is why I did some presentations at the Open Mainframe Summit detailing what I learned, and shortcuts I made by disassembling the Typescript so I could code in pure nodejs. I built some large CLI systems that emulate our mainframe product through REST, (E)JES. That's it in a nutshell.

I now write #fiction. Still logic, in a different form.

#retired #programmer #zowe #openmainframeproject #nodejs now an #author in the #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon

Paul Will Gamble

🇨🇦Jul 24, 2024

@sfwrtr @taur10 @alan @stevendbrewer at my shop we’ve been given plenty of presentations and demos on #zowe but we’re mostly 3270 sysprogs (not devs) and for those of us that even love dabbling with vs code and side projects, it’s a hard sell to retool people that are already comfortable and set in their ways.

This endeavour to bring Zowe and CICD stack has been named “Next Generation Mainframe Modernization”, the next crowd after us.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jul 24, 2024

@paulywill @taur10 @alan @stevendbrewer
Yep. Zowe is a way of standardizing MF access for a generation familiar with *nix. We realized internally that with REST, REXX, and Java APIs, it's simple for MF devs to roll there own tools w/o learning Zowe, and a lot more desirable and efficiently, esp. with REXX. But the next generation is thought to be bewildered by green screens and job cards. Condescending. Everyone's trainable if you're willing the hire and train. Industry is increasingly stingy, though. Things like Zowe try to minimize retraining, but are ultimately another toolset. Metaphorically, I wonder if we are witnessing the birth of the new COBOL of legacy programs for the 50s.

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jul 24, 2024

@sfwrtr @paulywill @taur10 @alan Reading MF as the only thing I think of MF as standing for…

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jul 24, 2024

@stevendbrewer @paulywill @taur10 @alan
LOL. MF stands for Mostly Fictional. 😋

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jul 24, 2024

@sfwrtr @paulywill @taur10 @alan It *could* stand for that. But I'm thinkin' of somethin' else…

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jul 24, 2024

@stevendbrewer @paulywill @taur10 @alan
Mainframe? Modern Fantasy?

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jul 24, 2024

@stevendbrewer @paulywill @taur10 @alan
Oh, that!. What ya say when the program goes into an infinite loop. Gotcha. 😇

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Jan 7, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan that is a real accomplish. very cool

Kazinator Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan

That problem with the file from 1989 (lower case a's becoming circumflexes) is worth reporting.

If you were able to attach that file to the bug report, there is a good chance someone could look at it.

I reported a user experience problem in a certain Libre Office Writer dialog about paragraph breaking, just this past summer. It was discussed, and got addressed.

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Jan 8, 2024

@Kazinator @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan

I will look at the file with the "a" replaced by a circumflex in TextEdit first. This is the type of silly thing that just shouts Pilot error!" maybe decades old.

Otherwise, I will consider doing a report.

Michael Lewis Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan Funny, I was having a similar conversation yesterday, and found LibreOffice could open my old university essays from 1990-1994, written on an Atari ST, just fine, with all the layout, pagination etc. preserved.

MicroBlog Castellano Jan 8, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan I remember reading Word for mac files using wordperfect 8 for linux. Winword (i. e. Word 6.0 for windows and newer) could not read word 2.0 for mac files.

Mathias Wolfbrok on FGC Network Jan 9, 2024

That reminds me of when I had to open old early 2000s QuarkXpress files which were burnt on a CD by a Mac a few years back (AKA in the 2010s)… And to recover those I had to get the files using an Ubuntu machine and then use InDesign to open it because modern QuarkXpress on Windows wouldn’t accept them

Obviously I would have preferred to have found Open Source software which could open QuarkXpress files and essentially have the same functionality as that old QuarkXpress version at the time but oh well, it was better than nothing

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jan 9, 2024

@MathiasWolfbrok @sfwrtr @alan @taur10 Scribus has a "basic xtg import" from QuarkXpress. https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Why_Scribus_doesn%27t_support_QuarkXpress_and_other_major_publishing_applications

I've used Scribus for years to do page layout. It's amazing. Its only real shortcoming is that it doesn't do epub.

Alan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏 Jan 9, 2024

@stevendbrewer @MathiasWolfbrok @sfwrtr @taur10 Since we're in that zone, I should mention Inkscape's ability to pull in Corel Draw files.

Steven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jan 9, 2024

@alan @MathiasWolfbrok @sfwrtr @taur10 Inkscape is great for vector graphics, but it doesn't really have the support you need for desktop publishing (cascading styles, pages, etc.) But with GNU/IMP, Inkscape, and Scribus, I haven't needed to use an Adobe app in many years.

Jan Helebrant Jan 9, 2024

@sfwrtr @stevendbrewer @taur10 @alan We also use LibreOffice at work (we also usually have some version of MSO but for me LO is the main tool) and several times I was able to "recover" old Word files using LO much better than Word. It's embarrassing that MS can't provide 100% backwards compatibility for their own proprietary format.