I distinctly remember having ClarisWorks 4 with a splash screen similar to ClarisWorks 3. It was the same image used on the box in a lot of cases. I looked everywhere and I almost had to accept that I did not remember it correctly. THEN, I stumbled across this webpage:
http://archive.retro.co.za/mirrors/68000/www.vintagemacworld.com/iifx.html
That's the one I remember! Luckily, this actually shows the revision as "4.0Bv1", apparently a beta version? Interesting. Wow, that brings really good memories.
I am not sure if I am allowed to ask here, but does anyone have any idea where I can find this unusual version? It does not appear to be out there any place where I can find it.
Here's a Windows version of 4.0Bv1.
ClarisWorks 4.0Bv1 for Windows (Nov 1995) [British English] (3.5).7z.zip
Thank you for that Tom. I put together a virtual machine with Windows 95 and tried it. Unfortunately, it has the normal splash screen. If it had the graphics, I would definitely been doing some hacking with ResEdit to get that look back. The really interesting thing about the early beta Mac version is that it has that giant 4, just like the icon!
clarisworks_win.png
I sure wish I would have known that was unusual and kept a copy of it.
cw40v1.jpg
This is also the v4 splash screen that I remember (not the gears). From Macintosh Repository.
ClarisWorks4.0SC.sit_.zip
Thank you so much for this! I have already started 'translating' it back to US English. I found the 4.0Bv5 British English version earlier, which already has the newer gear icons. However, its internal resources are very similar to this version that you shared with me. Most things match up exactly so I am doing a lot of copy/paste with Resorcerer. It is mainly DITL and STR# resources. Also, window titles are stored in the DLOG resources, and plenty of other resources sprinkled around.
I would estimate that I have done about 25% of the translation already. I will try and get this as accurate as possible and share it. Interestingly, the PICT resources for the splash/info window are slightly a different size than they are shown in the window, causing some rather jagged scaling. You can really see it in the slanted part of the big "4". Even in the original screenshot I posted here, it looks like it probably does have that same issue. I don't remember that but I bet it was always like that!
In the past, I have translated MacFC 0.8.1 from Japanese to English. On a US English Mac, the text also showed up with similar garbage due to the incorrect encoding. I found that I could copy/paste into a text file, then view that text file in a web browser on modern computer. I could then manually change the text encoding in the browser to Japanese Shift-JIS (in that case) and that would bring back the original characters that I could then copy directly into Google Translate. I am thinking that I can do something similar for the handful of cases that don't match up between 4.0Bv1 and 4.0Bv5.
Thanks again for finding that! I appreciate it a lot!