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The original WWW proposal is a Word for Macintosh 4.0 file from 1990. Recovering the text, diagrams, and formatting was not impossible but it was hard. A great example of the use of #emulation for historical research and digital preservation. https://blog.jgc.org/2024/02/the-original-www-proposal-is-word-for.html Edit: I'm glad this resonated with so many of you. Just to clarify— the author of the linked blog post is John Graham-Cumming (someone get him on fedi!) 💾 27 comments
 @kdriscoll Standard LaserWriter driver (even in System 6) allowed to create pure PostScript output. I forgot the trick though. That's probably the best output that is still portable you can get.  Word 4.0 was BAE. Im surprised Sir Tim didn't type it up on his #NeXT. Ah, I see. He didn't have the NeXT yet. @kdriscoll @martin Also, #LibreOffice rules! It is my go-to tool for recovering files from archaic formats no longer supported by their original vendors. #FOSS FTW!  @emdalton @kdriscoll @martin Pretty sure I used LibreOffice to resurrect a dozen Excel 1.0 files that the current (as of ~2016) MS Excel said it couldn't open. @emdalton @kdriscoll @martin LibreOffice really is a Swiss army knife. I was tickled to learn that it can read WriteNow files, but it reminded me that (like @roadskater mentioned elsewhere on this thread) I have no easy way to access the files on old 3.5" diskettes. @emdalton @kdriscoll @martin And typed my senior thesis on a Selectric with correction tape 6 years later. Bought my first Mac in March 1984 after scraping the money together (grad school finances, you know).  @kdriscoll I guess it was you or somebody who added “.doc" to the filename since that would have been entirely meaningless to any version of Classic MacOS  Hey, @loriemerson - seems like the author here ("whoever he is") is describing some #othernetwork ... 🙂 @kdriscoll Files for my doctoral thesis are Word 5.0. Problem is, how the hell do I get them off a 30+ year old floppy that requires an old Mac with a variable speed hard drive?  @kdriscoll @jonkeegan Another endorsement for LibreOffice for ancient file recovery: I used it to recover old high school assignments in ClarisWorks formats from the mid-‘90s and few years ago. It just worked!  @kdriscoll in my closet of old computers, which has filled up over the years, I have an original Mac, with an external 20 Meg! Hard drive the size of two bricks. I was able to run an entire publishing company with it in…late 80s-92ish iirc. It still turned on, last time I tried, I’m sure I’m not the only one that still has these systems, check around hobbyist boards, I bet any number of folks would be happy to try and load the file for you.  @kdriscoll Cool, and super weird to see people still reach for OpenOffice before LibreOffice in 2024. OpenOffice is basically dead, development wise, and almost always has been since LibreOffice gained traction. I guess OOo still lives in people's heads, rent free :) @popey @kdriscoll I'd be more than happy to share a PDF generated on a Mac with Office 2001, which loads the original document perfectly. @kdriscoll I took the original proposal doc, downloaded with wget to retain datestamp, opened in MS Word 4.0 on a Mac emulator, printed to postscript using Laserwriter printer, then distilled to PDF/A. Made a MacBinary with Type/Creator added back to file. #digipres https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19n5GdMt9sX4xEw5HEG4wTaWcbUYDh9KU?usp=sharing  @kdriscoll |
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The proposal was written on a Mac, but the actual software was written on a NeXTSTEP machine? Odd combination.