Conversion of a Framemaker file?

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:36:03 -0700, "Tammy Van Boening" 
<Tammy.VanBoening at healthlanguage.com> wrote:

>Using Framemaker 7.2 with all updates/patches on Windows XP/SP2. I have
>several hundred inherited FM files that I need to update. One of the
>files is giving me that infamous error "although the < >.fm appears to
>be an fm file, it cannot be opened with this version of Framemaker."
>Since I am running 7.2, I am assuming that somehow it was created with
>8.0.x (which is weird since the version of FM that I am running is what
>my predecessor also used.)  Does anyone out there have FM 8.0 that would
>be willing to open this file and save it as a .mif so that I can get it
>converted to a 7.2 file? (I have tried that heroic open command but to
>no avail either.)

Try opening the Frame file in Notepad.  ;-)

You won't see much that's intelligible, but the very start
will be <MakerFile 7.0H> if it's from Frame 7.0.  (The letter
may be different, but the number is what counts.)  That way
you'll know if it really is from Frame 8.

Another thing to check is whether the byte count is an exact
multiple of 1024.  If not, the file may have been corrupted
during transfer, either because it was treated as ASCII instead
of binary, or because something was added to the end (like a 
CR/LF pair).  If it's just two bytes over, you can use a hex 
editor to trim it back; I wrote a little utility to do that.
If it's more, you probably need to get another copy from the
originator...

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/