How to open WRI files in Windows 7/8?

[BetaNewbie]

So, now wordpad is upgraded and it doesn't support WRI files anymore.

And Word doesn't seem to work either.

Now how can I open WRI files in Windows 7/8?

Don't tell me to run Write in a Windows 3.1 VM... That is really not convenience.

[computebrute]

Change the file extension to a .txt file!

EDIT: I tried it myself. Did not work.

[xelloss]

So, now wordpad is upgraded and it doesn't support WRI files anymore.
And Word doesn't seem to work either.
Now how can I open WRI files in Windows 7/8?
Don't tell me to run Write in a Windows 3.1 VM... That is really not convenience.

Yes, .WRI files are really a pain in the ass.
If I remember correctly, the .WRI file format is a stripped down variant of a very old version of Microsoft Word's .DOC format (Write itself is an early branch of Word for Windows). Given the fact that we have full source code to Winword 1.1a, developing a converter is definitely a possibility.

But if you're asking for an immediate solution, there is none that I know of.

[WinPC]

So, now wordpad is upgraded and it doesn't support WRI files anymore.
And Word doesn't seem to work either.
Now how can I open WRI files in Windows 7/8?
Don't tell me to run Write in a Windows 3.1 VM... That is really not convenience.

Yes, .WRI files are really a pain in the ass.
If I remember correctly, the .WRI file format is a stripped down variant of a very old version of Microsoft Word's .DOC format (Write itself is an early branch of Word for Windows). Given the fact that we have full source code to Winword 1.1a, developing a converter is definitely a possibility.

But if you're asking for an immediate solution, there is none that I know of.

Copying WRITE.EXE and WRITE.HLP from Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups should work if you are using a 32-bit operating system, or if you are using a 64-bit operating system, you should copy the same files from Windows NT 3.51.

[AlphaBeta]

Change the file extension to a .txt file!

I hope you do realise .wri is not plain text.

[cantasan99]

Change the file extension to a .txt file!

I hope you do realise .wri is not plain text.

As he says it won't work, I have tried it.

[The Distractor]

couldn't you use write.exe from nt 3.x?

[WinPC]

couldn't you use write.exe from nt 3.x?

That is exactly what I said above, and yet people seem not to have read my post. We even have several different versions of Windows NT 3.51 here, so there's nothing stopping the original poster from extracting the WRITE.EX_ (WRITE.EXE) and WRITE.HL_ (WRITE.HLP) files from the Windows NT 3.51 CD-ROM.

[The Distractor]

couldn't you use write.exe from nt 3.x?

That is exactly what I said above, and yet people seem not to have read my post. We even have several different versions of Windows NT 3.51 here, so there's nothing stopping the original poster from extracting the WRITE.EX_ (WRITE.EXE) and WRITE.HL_ (WRITE.HLP) files from the Windows NT 3.51 CD-ROM.

I actually just noticed that, now you've mentioned it. I only read the part of your post where you suggested using write.exe from the 16-bit Windows 3.x/WfW 3.x.

Of course, if I remember correctly, the write.exe src is included with the partial NT 4 src on the BA FTP..

[BetaNewbie]

couldn't you use write.exe from nt 3.x?

That is exactly what I said above, and yet people seem not to have read my post. We even have several different versions of Windows NT 3.51 here, so there's nothing stopping the original poster from extracting the WRITE.EX_ (WRITE.EXE) and WRITE.HL_ (WRITE.HLP) files from the Windows NT 3.51 CD-ROM.

I actually just noticed that, now you've mentioned it. I only read the part of your post where you suggested using write.exe from the 16-bit Windows 3.x/WfW 3.x.

Of course, if I remember correctly, the write.exe src is included with the partial NT 4 src on the BA FTP..

I tried to run Write of Windows 3.2 on Windows 8 (I do so since I need to read Chinese files), but it turns out the "Call to Undefined Dynalink" error and refuses to run.

[xelloss]

couldn't you use write.exe from nt 3.x?

That is exactly what I said above, and yet people seem not to have read my post. We even have several different versions of Windows NT 3.51 here, so there's nothing stopping the original poster from extracting the WRITE.EX_ (WRITE.EXE) and WRITE.HL_ (WRITE.HLP) files from the Windows NT 3.51 CD-ROM.

I actually just noticed that, now you've mentioned it. I only read the part of your post where you suggested using write.exe from the 16-bit Windows 3.x/WfW 3.x.

Unfortunately write.exe was never ported to 32 bits (not even for Windows NT). Rumour has it that the code was too old and messy, and MS decided to write a RTF editor for Win32 from scratch.
So there is no way you can run write on 64 bit Windows.

Of course, if I remember correctly, the write.exe src is included with the partial NT 4 src on the BA FTP..

Alas, it isn't. Only a stub calling wordpad.exe is included.

[computebrute]

I've always wondered how you extract those files that have an underscore as the last character in the extension.

[Wheatley]

Extract them like just any ordinary cab.

[Overdoze]

Extract them like just any ordinary cab.

Depends whether the compression method used is KWAJ or SZDD. I'm not sure about modern archivers' support for these two standards, but EXPAND.EXE from DOS 6.X (which used KWAJ, some Office versions also use this) supports both, while the other EXPAND.EXE (included with pretty much everything else, even Windows 7) only supports SZDD.

Here's a page with some additional technical info, should anyone be interested.

[The Distractor]

Alas, it isn't. Only a stub calling wordpad.exe is included.

It actually is. Just not in the place you looked.

private\mvdm\wow16\write

[3155ffGd]

That would be pretty awful to port to Win32 though because it depends on int 21 calls which need to be converted to something slightly more modern.

But if what Wikipedia says is correct, older versions of WordPad (pre XP SP2) can read WRI files. Maybe it would be easier to use that?

[Overdoze]

You can open them in Notepad, but you will lose the formatting.

[BetaNewbie]

OK, I find a solution to this, but still not perfect.
Extract WORDPAD.EXE and WRITE32.WPC from Windows NT 4.0, they are 32-bit programs, so it should work on x64 systems.
It can open WRI files, all the Chinese characters are rendered incorrectly, but English rendered fine.

This is the README.WRI from Windows 3.2, opened in Windows 8.1.

[BetaNewbie]

Besides, Although WRI files are not plain text, they can be opened by notepad.

[hounsell]

It can open WRI files, all the Chinese characters are rendered incorrectly, but English rendered fine.

This is down to the host OS changing really - Unless there's a way in the old Wordpad to force an encoding, to force it to use the old Chinese character encoding. NT assumes Unicode, and the Wordpad from NT4 will probably assume the same.

[BetaNewbie]

It can open WRI files, all the Chinese characters are rendered incorrectly, but English rendered fine.

This is down to the host OS changing really - Unless there's a way in the old Wordpad to force an encoding, to force it to use the old Chinese character encoding. NT assumes Unicode, and the Wordpad from NT4 will probably assume the same.

I don't think so, Chinese uses GB2312 encoding, it is supported by NT4 and even Windows 8.
I will try to run wordpad on NT4 natively.

[hounsell]

Yes, but my point is that on 9x, each localisation has the relevent encoding as the system encoding. This isn't the case in NT - everyone uses Unicode by default. Other encodings are supported of course, but that's for the application in question to set the encoding to one of these other options - I'm not sure if there's a way to do this in WordPad?

[viper]

I opened a .WRI file using Word 2013 in Windows 8.1 w/ Update 1