There is no single “Ventura file” that covers the application’s entire history. Early Xerox Ventura projects are often collections of related files, while later Corel-era work can use different publication formats. If you inherit an old archive, the filename extension is therefore a clue—not the whole story.
.VP — later Corel Ventura publication
.VP is associated with later Corel Ventura publications, including the era most users associate with Ventura 10. If you have a collection of VP files, preserve them unchanged and keep any adjacent images, fonts, and other assets with them even when the publication itself appears self-contained.
.PUB — early publication file
In Xerox Ventura 1.x–3.0, a .PUB file is the publication-level root. It can hold table-of-contents and index settings and list the chapter files that belong to the publication.
It is not the same thing as a modern Microsoft Publisher file merely because both products have used the .pub extension. Context matters.
.CHP — chapter
A .CHP file describes an early Ventura chapter: page and frame geometry plus references to the files that supply the style sheet, text, artwork, captions, and other content. If no publication file exists, a CHP can itself be the root from which a recovery tool follows the project references.
.STY — style sheet
The .STY file contains the style sheet for an early project, including page layout and paragraph-tag definitions. It can be crucial to reproducing what the text was supposed to look like.
.CAP — captions and frame text
A same-named .CAP companion can contain text typed into boxes or captions rather than flowing in the primary chapter text file. Ignoring it can mean losing visible text even when the main text file appears complete.
.VGR — Ventura drawn graphics
.VGR holds Ventura-drawn material such as lines, rectangles, ellipses, rounded rectangles, and associated box text. It is part of the page construction rather than an ordinary placed bitmap.
.WID — printer font metrics
.WID files contain printer font-width information compiled from Ventura font metrics. Those widths influence how text measures and therefore where lines and pages break. In preservation work, a missing width table can matter even if the font name itself is known.
.TXT, .WS, .DOC, .GEN — text sources
Early projects can reference several types of text files, including plain text, WordStar material, and Ventura-generated tagged text. An extension such as .DOC in an old project does not necessarily imply a modern Microsoft Word document.
.GEM, .IMG, .WMF, .PCX, .TIF, .EPS — artwork
Ventura supported a range of contemporary bitmap and vector formats. An old project can therefore depend on artwork that modern file browsers no longer preview conveniently. Keep those assets with the project even if you plan to convert them later.
.CIF and .SEM — project metadata
Early Ventura project sets can also contain chapter-information and semaphore files. They may not be visually important to a recovered page, but preservation practice is simple: copy first, decide what can be discarded much later.
Why the whole folder matters
A typical early project might look conceptually like this:
BOOK.PUB
CH01.CHP
CH01.STY
CH01.CAP
CH01.VGR
CH01.TXT
CH02.CHP
CH02.TXT
OUTPUT.WID
FIGURE1.GEMThe CHP files contain references to the other pieces; the publication orders the chapters. Pulling out only the files with the largest size or most obvious name can destroy the relationships a recovery tool needs.
Old paths are part of the evidence
References inside early projects may include DOS drive letters and directory paths. Preserve those strings until recovery is complete. A path that looks useless today can reveal where a missing image or style sheet originally lived.
Sources
- Old File Viewer: Xerox Ventura Publisher file format
- Old File Viewer: converting early Ventura projects
For the broader recovery process, see Recovering old Ventura Publisher publications and Migrating a Ventura archive to modern formats.
