from  "Otmar K. Foelsche" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: #9760 issues with old word files containing Cyrillic
Date: January 10, 2012 4:28:44 AM EST


These files would probably require the Apple Cyrillic Language kit and a system round version 6.0. If the files have been created under system 7, it may be possible to use an older browser to open these files. The worst scenario could have been created by your colleague's  use of one of the third party additions to allow Cyrillic input and display which were available at the time to Mac users before the language kits and/or the unicode implementation - these things would probably require some significant work involving a look-up table etc. If your colleague is lucky,  an old Mac, and a floppy with the Apple Cyrillic Language Kit  and probably an old version of Microsoft Word would make these files readable. There are several other approaches possible (like conversion programs for various Russian encoding schemes) that may accomplish the same results. But most of these conversion programs run only on the old systems…. 

In any case, try to find out first how these files were created, then explore possible options. 

Once you can read the files you will also be challenged with the issue of turning the text into unicode. If you can print the files (which I doubt!) you could also think of OCR and taking things from there….

 
Otmar Foelsche




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