Unable to Open and Recover Old PageMaker 6.5 Files

A bit more to add to this:

I have found that files made with a double-byte system like Pagemaker Japanese will not open successfully on a  Western(Roman) version. They will invariably fail with the dreaded Bad Table Index error, which is exactly what I encountered, as my PM is Western.

In theory it should be able to convert to InDesign if it was version 6.5 or 7.0, but the file is v6.0J, so it can't possibly open it anyway. It would need to be upgraded to v6.5J or v7.0J first.

Okay.

Your file is actually a Mac PM 6.0 file made with the Japanese version of PM.

Unfortunately, it's corrupted and will not open. This might be because of the version, or it might be because of how it was retrieved from the old drive. How were you copying the file over?

What I can tell you is that there are 999 pages in it, and I've successfully extracted the few images that were in it.

Do you have access to the fonts on your old drive? My guess is that they were Type 1 versions of the LaserVietnamese set.

___

@34729163 info:Source Pathname: Z:File 1
Document Size: 105.6MB
Most recently saved version: 6.0-J
Total Pages: 999
Page Width: 8.268"
Page Height: 11.693"

@4050504:DOCUMENT FONTS
@34729163 fonts title:Font Name PS Filename
@34729163 fonts: «Plain»VinaSans VinaSan
«Bold»ç◊ñæí©ëà Bold
«Italic»VinaPala VinaPalIta
«Plain»VinaChan VinaCha
«Plain»ç◊ñæí©ëÃ
«Plain»VinaPala VinaPal
«Plain»íÜÉSÉVÉbÉNëà SÉVÉbNëÃ
«Bold»VinaSans VinaSanBol
«Bold»VinaPala VinaPalBol
«Plain»VinaGara VinaGar
«Italic»VinaSans VinaSanIta
«Bold+Italic»VinaPala VinaPalBolIta
«Italic»ç◊ñæí©ëà Itali
«Plain»VNI-Times VNITim
«Bold»VNI-Times VNITim
«Italic»ÇlÇr ñæí© Itali
«Bold+Italic»VinaSans VinaSanBolIta
«Bold»ïΩê¨ñæí© Bold
«Bold»VinaChan VinaChaBol
«Plain»ïΩê¨ñæí©
«Plain»VNM-VietHa VNMVieHa
«Italic»VinaChan VinaChaIta

@4050504:PICTURE FONTS
@PIC8825289 fonts title:Picture External Name
@PIC8825289 fonts:
@4050504:GRAPHICS
@picture title:(Edge values measured from top-left of page.)
Pathname
Type Page Size Box Angle Pic Angle Skew XScale YScale Top edge Left edge DPI Type Halftone/Transfer Encoding
@picture items:
nguyen-tho-sinh.jpg
JPEG 145 --- 0° 0° 0° 91.8% 89.8% 2.363" 1.969" --- Binary
100 Tay Dai Tu 765 Nara (5).JPG
JPEG 443 --- 0° 0° 0° 54.2% 56.8% 5.031" 2.122" --- Binary
Thap Tokyo moi.JPG
JPEG 627 --- 0° 0° 0° 73.5% 69.7% 2.363" 1.969" --- Binary
Mishima.png
PNGf 891 --- 0° 0° 0° 28.7% 29.3% 5.913" 4.874" --- Binary

@4050504:STYLE SHEETS
@37639648 sheet: ñ{ï∂
@37639648 sheet: ÉLÉÉÉvÉVÉáÉì
@37639648 sheet: ìÀÇ´èoǵÉCÉìÉfÉìÉg
@37639648 sheet: ëÂå©èoǵ
@37639648 sheet: å©èoǵÇP
@37639648 sheet: å©èoǵÇQ
@37639648 sheet: Normal
@37639648 sheet: Title
@37639648 sheet: Body Text 2
@37639648 sheet: Body Text

@4050504:H&Js
@h and j: None

I will take a look and report back as well.

But based on my experience with attempting to ressurrect a client's old PM files in Telugu, I can say this is the problem you will be facing:

The issue with languages like Vietnamese "back then" is that Unicode fonts did not exist yet so many of these languages used fonts with standard-for-the-day encoding, but used special plugins to enter the text and format multi-component glyphs. These will not convert to InDesign.

Even successfully re-opening it in PageMaker requires the EXACT fonts that were used then (i.e. not modern Unicode versions), and possibly a region-specific version of PM.

Well, if my old mirror-drive G4 was still functional, I'd be offering to pop them open in PM6.5 myself. Sometimes it's possible to get an old PageMaker document to open in CS6 after doing a Diagnostic Recompose in PageMaker. However, I've not yet gotten around to getting ye olde G4 up and running (narrowed it down to logic board, RAM, or processor...) so I can't make that offer today. 

The font used was made by Linguist's Software. Assuming you can get the old PageMaker files open, you probably want to would have to buy their tool to convert their proprietary old-school ASCII-based encoding to Unicode. I've written JS tools to convert old Linguist's Software fonts to Unicode once the old PM files are opened in InDesign, which is probably something that you should put on your list to think about, because "mostly LS LaserVietnamese encoding, with occasional Chinese or Japanese characters" is the kind of input that simple ASCII-to-Unicode converters tend to choke on.  But first, you have to find out if the old PM documents are openable at all, before we start talking about codepage conversion.

@duy_0812

If you can't open those files - how can you see font / encoding issue?

I have CS6 - you can upload your files somewhere and either post link here or on priv - please click my nickname. 

I am sorry to hear about these issues but those files may be toast. Are there PDFs? Are there hard copies?

There are a few active users here that might be able to try to open those files but most of us have long abandoned Pagemaker and older versions of InDesign.