Appleworks - database conversion

Latte Other Software & Development
1

I was finally poking into my old backup disks, recently, seeking a novel draft that I’d not worked on for some years. I found it, pulled out my iWork disks and finally installed and updated Pages, and was pleased at the file conversion.

Except for the language databases.

Anybody know how I can pull the data out of my few old Appleworks databases?

Or does anybody have Appleworks who would be willing to convert a few (3, I think) files into something more modern for me? :mrgreen:

2

'dee,

if you open the files using less or vi can you see any text?

3

Using wha?

4

open terminal
cd to the directory where your file is
the type: less
You should get a “contains binary” warning – hit y.
look for something that looks like real text.

5

Try this: Open Terminal.app (in Utilities) and type in strings followed by a space. Now drop the dictionary file into the Terminal window. It should print a folder hierarchy followed by the name of the dictionary file. Press Enter in the Terminal window.

Do you get any words from the dictionary? If you do, then let us know. Getting it converted into an OS X dictionary should not only be possible, but fairly easy to do. Most likely it will take just one convoluted command line. If you don’t get any words though, it’s probably lost bits.

If you do get a long list of original words, one per line, and nothing else, you could probably go ahead and do this in Terminal:

cd ~/Library/Spelling cp en en-bak strings [DROP FILE] | ruby -e 'print STDIN.read.gsub("\n", "\000")' >> en

That will back up your current dictionary and then append all of the entries from the old dictionary to it. This assumes you are using U.S. English. If not, some of that will need to be altered. British English, for instance, is en_GB wherever you see en above.

If things go awfully wrong, execute this command:

cp en-bak en

To revert to the original OS X dictionary.

Don’t do any of the above if you see strange alignment or multiple words per line. That would require more analysis and different codes.

6

I can see text sandwiched in all the symbols, though it’s all out of order and easier reading with “vi”.

Now to try Amber’s directions again… I’m having some trouble with those. :blush:

EDIT: “Vi” command’s getting multiple words per line. It’s hard to view all the text, and I can’t figure out how to export what I see in terminal. Hm.

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Amber, we could be nice and ask 'dee to PM one of us the file. What do you think?

8

Aw, Jaysen. :mrgreen:

I got the strings thing working. It does have multiple words per line, but at least it’s viewable. I think I’ll be able to at least get the data out and into something else from here.

Thanks for both of your help! hugs

9

if you do

strings [DROP FILE] | sort -u | ruby -e 'print STDIN.read.gsub("\n", "\000")' >> en

it should eliminate the duplicate lines.

10

And this modification should eliminate the multiple words per line problem:

strings [DROP FILE] | sort -u | ruby -e 'print STDIN.read.gsub("(\n|\s)+", "\000")' >> en

That will look for newlines, tabs, and spaces either all by themselves or in groups, and convert them into null characters, which is what OS X wants between words.

But yes, we are starting to shoot birds blindfolded while someone standing next to us says which direction to point the gun in.

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See what happens if you do that for too long? -->

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And notice, Wock is still flying around.