Opening Professional Composer files

[Shooshie]

ResEdit makes more sense if you open about 3 old files with it of varying types. It's basically just a list of attributes that the application looks for in order to know what to do with it, how to treat it, save it, etc. You should see fields in which you can directly edit those things. If you can figure out the filetype of a Composer file, that might help salvage those others, if they aren't showing the same.

In some apps, if the app crashed while the file was open, then it won't open the file, because there was a flag in the hex headers that was set one way when the file was open, and another way when it was closed. I used to go into a hex editor and change those flags on a database I used, called Filevision. Composer may have had one of those flags. I don't remember. Nor could I tell you where to find the flag, but in Filevision it was in the first 20 or 30 lines of hex code in the editor. I think the ASCII was Y or N. If the good file happened to have a Y early on, and the bad ones had an N in the same place, you might try changing that to a Y (on a copy, of course). But that's requires a hex editor; I haven't had one of those in years.

Or... you might consider asking MOTU if they can help. Maybe Jim Cooper could be of help if he's still there. Long shot, but you never know.

Shooshie

[stubbsonic]

Thanks, Shooshie. ResEdit didn't see a resource fork for any of these files (even the working ones).

[mikehalloran]

Here's a old tread from the old Finale forum.

http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=293417

I would go to Macintosh Garden, download Mosiac, open in OS 9, see if it can stay open long enough to open the files and export as MIDI. There's an early version of Composer also but I think you need OS 7 or 8 to run it.

[Shooshie]

Thanks, Shooshie. ResEdit didn't see a resource fork for any of these files (even the working ones).

Oh heck... NOW I see what you were saying. I've been kinda busy lately, which leads to skimming the posts. I should have known that you knew and understood basic ResEdit probably better than me!

[stubbsonic]

I would go to Macintosh Garden, download Mosiac, open in OS 9, see if it can stay open long enough to open the files and export as MIDI. There's an early version of Composer also but I think you need OS 7 or 8 to run it.

Thanks, Mike. I'll give this a try.

I was able to find a demo of Mosaic on MacintoshGarden, but didn't see any other installers in the search list. I'll see if the demo will let me do anything useful. I'm a little doubtful since neither DP 2.7, 4.5 or 4.6 would recognize the file type. I never saw anything about a file extension.

[Shooshie]

Did Mosaic open Composer files? My memory is of it NOT opening them. I had to covert them in the original Composer app. Or was there a utility or something? Does anyone else remember? I'd hate for anyone to have to spend all that time getting Mosaic running, only to find that it did not open Composer files.

Shooshie

[mikehalloran]

That thread mentioned a complicated process for getting them to look right and didn't work very well. Others have mentioned that Mosiac can be used to convert Composer to MIDI.