IMac .docs to Mac Classic

Question

I own a powerhouse 27" iMac, but I love the old Apple/Macintosh Computer systems. I collect them and even do a minor bit of written work on some of them... just for the nostalgic feel of it.
My question is this: How do I get an RTF file written in Word, Text Edit or [preferably] Pages to transfer over [and be readable/workable] on the Mac Classic?
It works via 1.44mb floppy the other way around, but I can't get anything written on the iMac to be legible on the Mac Classic.

Answer 1

iconRED,
Part of what you are seeing is meta data. The best illustration of meta data comes by opening a Word '97 document with Word 5.1. The older software will show a lot of gibberish, including information like who created the file and where it is saved to on the hard drive. But, on page ten or twelve, you will see the clean text from the newer software.
Newer software has added so much more information that the older software does not know how to deal with it. The trick is to get the newer software to save the files in the simplest of file formats. Easier said than done.
For example, Office 2004 will crash OS X if you copy more than just text from a website and paste it into a Word document. Copy a file from a website and paste it into TextEdit, paste it into Pages and paste it into Word. You will get three different results. If you copy just small blocks of text from a website, you should get more predictable results.
For example, look at this page:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=1.04
That page gives you three options for looking at the data.
First, one cite at a time,
Second, the whole chapter at a time,
and
Third, "print friendly version."
If you copy and paste the whole page into a word processing application, you will end up with some gibberish. If you view the 'printer friendly page and copy the whole block of text, but not the whole page - do not use 'select all' under the edit menu, you will get nice useable text to paste. That information will paste nicely into Word 3.0 or 5.1. The fact that Microsoft successfully developed a way to crash OS X each and every time you try to paste anything but text into a Word 2004 document just shows how much extra junk is included in newer word processing documents.
So, if you want text documents to open cleanly in older software, you need to strip out all the junk. In other words, create a true RTF document on a new computer using new software and you will have backwards compatibility. Add any new features like photos, tables, hypertext, HTML, etc. and you will get gibberish on your older computers.
Hope that made sense.
Jim