Preserving Cricket Graphs

[Stacy Konkiel]

Hello hivemind,

I'm currently working with a faculty member in Biology to preserve 20+ years worth of born-digital research data and our latest challenge comes in the form of Cricket Graph files. 

Cricket Graph was a (now obsolete) Mac program that converted tabular data into basic graphs and outputted image files. We have many CG files in .gra format that cannot be opened, never mind re-saved in a non-proprietary format. 

In terms of newer software that might work with CG files, a test run with the trial version of DataGraph (http://www.visualdatatools.com/DataGraph/) was unsuccessful. We're hesitant to pay the $90 fee for the full version unless we can be assured that our old files can be opened. Does anyone have any experience with DG?

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for other software or emulators that can allow us to open and re-save .gra files into open formats, so that we can attempt to optimize them for preservation down the line?

Many thanks,

Stacy Konkiel

Science Data Management Librarian

Indiana University

[Simon Spero]

Do you have access to the original software?  If so, have you tried running that in an emulator?

You ought to be able to get at least bitmaps out of the package; you might also be able to save as postscript via a faux printer. 

See http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php for links.

Simon

 

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[Simon Spero]

Checking the Wikipedias, I see that Cricket Graph apparently exports to EPS directly. 

Simon

[Simon Spero]

And this claims to be a copy of the software. 

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/cricket-graph-iii

[Stacy Konkiel]

Simon,

I was not aware of the Mac emulator you sent a link to; thank you for that. I'll play around with the program in the emulator and let you know the results. 

Stacy

[James Rafferty]

I was the author of Cricket Graph.  I am now in beta with Draggin' Chart.  the follow up.  I have the software reading Cricket Graph classic files and in most cases I can read the CA-Cricket Graph III files.  Draggin' chart will import these directly but I am also working on a batch processor to convert Cricket Graph files to csv, Draggin' Chart or Excel files.  Had to reverse engineer the format from Ca-Cricket III but so far it works on all the files I have.

Send me more files and I will check them too.

Jim Rafferty

dragginsoftware.com

[Pat Chow-Fraser]

I would really like to USE Cricket Graph, not just convert old Cricket files. I no longer have any functional laptop that I can use to run Classic and have resorted to use Kaleidagraph for all my graphic needs, and it's depressing.  When will you have Draggin Chart available for purchase?  I can hardly wait.

[Fenton Heirtzler]

Dear Mr. Rafferty,

You wrote your comments back in 2014. As on July 1, 2016, your "Draggin Chart", at http://dragginsoftware.com/downloads/ is still in "beta" mode. What's going on?

[Bill Holben]

Hi Jim--Is Draggin' software available yet? Also, I'm interested in the educational version of cricket-graph phoenix. I'm a university professor in Montana. Will you make this available to me? I don't see any posts after June 2, 2016; is this forum still active? Bill Holben

[Fenton]

I asked the same question around 2 years back. To my best knowledge, nothing is new on this topic,

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[Alex Garnett]

Hi all,

I believe I didn't reply on this thread years ago because the solution proposed by the original author seemed much more fortuitous and useful, but if that hasn't materialized yet, I believe I did have some success opening the relevant files in the original Cricket Graph application in a Classic Mac emulator (would've been Mini vMac or Basilisk II, depending on whether I need System 6 or 7) and exporting them to a relatively open format (can't recall which one) that didn't have a resource fork and could therefore be relatively cleanly extracted into a modern filesystem. Beyond that my memory is hazy, but I'd be happy to further document this process if it's of interest.

[Rucus&Roll]

This seems to be a really old thread, but just in case somebody is still looking, I've just been copying the data from cricket graph III, and pasting in in a very old version of excel, then exporting it out of mac os via usb.

[Stanley Ambrose]

If you have an old pre-Intel Mac that runs system OS 9 then you can run Cricket Graph and convert graphs to EPS or PDF and data to TEXT files (and maybe CSV).

Statworks opens in OS-9 environment in early Macs that run OS-10 , but does not recognize numeric data in Statworks files and thus cannot make graphs.

Both apps were elegant, intuitive, fast, simple and powerful programs that have no equals in this modern world. Sigh....

Data Graph makes nice figures but the learning curve is steep, and what could be accomplished with a double click in Cricket graph now requires a new window. The clutter is inelegant,

[Jerry Ongerth]

I see no recent posts on this topic but I'll give it a try...I'm potentially at a dead end. I have some valuable data...never duplicated elsewhere...from about 1990...in the form of CricketGraph files. Some have data but most are graphs. After a lot of digging I have an apparently working copy of CricketGraph (CA-Cricket Graph III v 1.0 (July 15, 1992). It is running on my PowerBook G4 equipped with Mac OS 9. I have tested CG III by making a graph from the CG test file and it works. The old graphs are in a couple files each having a couple dozen graph files...all with literal names e.g M42695. By Get Info they are listed as "Unix Executable File". When I double click on one it needs to have an application chosen...Chosing CG III (from All Applications it returns "An error occurred while changing the application that opens " (file name) " because not enough information is available. Do you want to open  "  (file name) "  with CG II ?   If I click Update...the file can then be recognised as a Cricket file but it won't open it...Trying to open from inside CG III, the file does not even appear.    What can I do to open these graph files???

[Alex Garnett]

Hi Jerry,

Are you sure that's OS 9 on your Powerbook G4? Those all ran OSX, I think it'd be possible to install OS 9 on them but not necessarily easy...

I ask because the file extension thing is a common pre-OSX issue; pre-Unix Mac OS was the only operating system in widespread use that tended not to use file extensions at all, and modern OSX will tend to assume a file without an extension is a unix binary, because unless it's obviously plaintext, that's what a modern extensionless file tends to be.

I think trying to open the files from within Cricket is the right approach, though I'm puzzled that they don't show up -- it might be worth trying to run Classic Mode (the virtualized OS 9 environment) under an early OSX like Tiger on that Powerbook in order to eliminate any filesystem confusion.

Best,

-alex

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[Jerry Ongerth]

​Alex,

Thank you for thinking about this. I bought this PowerBook G4 new...and have the original install disks...Disk 2 specifically installs OS9 and is (i believe) the last one that supports the Classic environment...hence Cricket Graph. So with that aside can you make any suggestions?  I have tried to sort out the file extension issue by selecting one of what I am confidant are Cricket Graph graph files and using Get Info. That simply says, as in my original message, Unix Executable File. I know that when these were saved (30 years ago) they were graphs in CG. The problem may be that my laptop (the PowerBook G4) opens up in OSX but somehow must be going back and forth to use CG...maybe this is messing up the ability of CG to read the files???

Jerry

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From: digital-...@googlegroups.com <digital-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Alex Garnett <axf...@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [digital-curation] Re: Preserving Cricket Graphs

 

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[Matt Jones]

Hi Jerry,

Just speculating here, and please excuse my presumption if this is already all clear to you, but the issue could be simply that the files are not recognized by CG due to a missing signature.  Classic mac applications included a 4 letter creator and file type codes in the file's metadata.  The program ResEdit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ResEdit) can be used to edit a file's signature and resource fork in OS 9 to add the critical creator and file type codes. The Mac OS X also has commandline tools for manipulating the metadata and resource fork.  An overview is: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mac-os-x/0596004605/ch01s07.html

To be cautious, I'd only do that on a copy and not the original file.  Google says the codes for Cricket Graph are:

CGRF    Cricket Graph
CGPC    Cricket Graph chart

If you reset the signature so that the files are recognized as CG files, and they still won't open, I'd look into whether the resource fork is missing. Classic mac files had both a 'data' and 'resource' fork in their files, which can be lost if the file was moved through a filesystem (like a FAT system or a cdrom) that didn't preserve the resource fork. The resulting file when transferred back to the mac might be missing key data from the resource fork.  I'm not sure if Cricket Graph stored important info in its resource fork. But if so, then going back to originals and being sure to transfer the whole file including its resource fork with binhex encoding or another technique might help.

Again, just speculating, it could be lots of other things too corrupting the files, but hope this is helpful.

Matt

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/digital-curation/1588127021040.51252%40uow.edu.au.

[Jerry Ongerth]

​Matt,

Thank you...I'll have to learn more about all this...specifically your suggestions. At the moment I have my Power Mac 7300 working including its floppy drive. I have the disk with the original files that I want to read...unaltered. Later versions of the files that I have probably tried to read using OSX system machines have the Unix icons that are not recognised as CG in the OS 9 PowerBook.  I will spend some time looking into your ResEdit suggestions.  By the way, the old 800 Kb floppy w/ the original files is giving me a disk error...some data may be lost...message. I may try to get the disk repaired professionally.

Thanks again,

Jerry

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Sent: Thursday, 30 April 2020 9:15 AM

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[Fenton]

Correct me if I’m wrong, I think that no one has been responding to e-mails sent to that address for a number of years.

Fenton 

On Apr 28, 2020, at 20:23, Jerry Ongerth <jong...@uow.edu.au> wrote:



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[Jerry Ongerth]

​Fenton,

I think you are correct. In desperation I found this group by googling my problem...The thread had no activity later than 2018...most earlier. But, apparently some people are still hooked up...see below.

J. Ongerth

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Subject: Re: [digital-curation] Re: Preserving Cricket Graphs

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