FrameMaker 3 files

[Frank Stearns]

On Thu, 6 May 2010, subscribe at cuff.ca wrote:

> Scott,
>
> I really appreciate that you tried! I've been able to resurrect some 
> of the text using text editors, but the ideal scenario would have 
> recovered the diagrams as well.

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 long-term *reliable* 
storage of data) is how were these files stored? Optical media? (If 
so, what flavor?) Harddrives? Tape? (What flavor?)

Did you have any initial difficulty copying those files from that 
original media?

Thanks for any data points; that's mainly what we're collecting at the 
moment.

Sorry to hear about the data loss. We all dread that!


Frank Stearns Associates | makers of IXgen(tm) for FrameMaker(r)
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