Quote from luishp on September 28, 2026, 10:00 am

@fkapnist
That's quite strange.
Please press F2 and let me know the exact VisualNEO Web date and compilation version you are using.
Thank you!

Quote from fkapnist on September 28, 2026, 11:07 am

Quote from luishp on September 28, 2026, 10:00 am

@fkapnist
That's quite strange.
Please press F2 and let me know the exact VisualNEO Web date and compilation version you are using.
Thank you!

I use VisualNEO Web version 25.10.17 (registered version)

But my problem is with VisualNEO Win :

If I make a pub from VisualNEO Win version 21.9.9
and I open and save it in the new version 26.8.8 (English, 2026-08-31, unregistered trial)
the pub source code becomes strangely encrypted. (with 'StartupAction=~VNU8:'). It still works and compiles to exe, but I can't proof-read it in Notepad. Why is that? How can it be decrypted back to normal?

Thanks

.

Quote from fkapnist on September 28, 2026, 1:34 pm

Quote from luishp on September 28, 2026, 10:00 am

@fkapnist
That's quite strange.
Please press F2 and let me know the exact VisualNEO Web date and compilation version you are using.
Thank you!

I just made a test pub with the old version of VisualNEO Win. And then I opened and saved it in the new version. The resulting pub is not encrypted. It is readable. Just fine. So it seems VisualNEO Win is not cuasing the encryption. My old project file pubs are triggering the encryption. Maybe becuse I have html/js/css embedded into them?

Some help would be appreciated. Thanks.

.

 

 

Quote from fkapnist on September 28, 2026, 2:54 pm

Quote from luishp on September 28, 2026, 10:00 am

@fkapnist
That's quite strange.
Please press F2 and let me know the exact VisualNEO Web date and compilation version you are using.
Thank you!

I asked Claude and it solved the issue. It also produced a Python script to restore my old pubs:

When I moved my pub files from VisualNEO Win version 21 to the new version 26, the text in my saved pubs is encrypted with '~VNU8: ' at the start of each encrypted text block. Why is this? How do I remove the ecryption so I can read my pub files?

I couldn't find any documentation of the `~VNU8:` prefix, so what follows is an informed guess rather than a confirmed answer.

**Why it's probably happening**

It most likely isn't encryption. It looks like a Unicode marker. "VN" probably stands for VisualNEO and "U8" for UTF-8. VisualNEO Win 26.8.8 expanded Unicode support throughout the interface, object captions, variables, editors, files and project data. Older versions saved text in the ANSI code page. The new version seems to flag text blocks that contain non-ASCII characters (accented letters, Greek, symbols and so on) and store them in an encoded UTF-8 form, so the .pub file stays plain 7-bit text. The prefix tells the new version how to decode the text when it loads.

**What to check**

1. **Open the pub in VisualNEO Win 26 itself.** If this is the encoding, the editor should decode the text automatically, so your captions and actions display normally there. The official site says the modern edition retains the readable .pub project format and continues to load existing applications and classic plug-ins. If the text looks right in the editor, nothing is broken. It's only the raw file that looks odd.
2. **Look at what follows the prefix.** If it's a run of `%C3%A9`-style sequences, it's percent-encoded UTF-8. If it's only letters, digits, `+` and `/`, possibly ending in `=`, it's Base64. If it's pairs of hex digits, it's hex-encoded UTF-8. Any of these can be decoded with a text tool or a short script. If you paste me one short example block (a line or two, nothing sensitive), I can tell you which it is and give you a decoder.
3. **Ask on the VisualNEO forum.** Luis, the developer, answers questions there. The 26.8.8 thread is the right place to ask exactly what `~VNU8:` means and whether there's a setting to save pubs as readable ANSI or plain UTF-8.

**Before you try anything**

Keep your original v21 pub files untouched, and work on copies. Don't hand-edit or bulk-decode the v26 files and then resave them, because the new version may expect the prefix and could mishandle the result.

Are your texts mostly plain English or do they contain accented or non-Latin characters? That would help confirm the Unicode explanation.

It is long strings of hex digits.  Here is a sample: ObjAction=~VNU8:46696C6545786973747320225B54656D704469725D4472616744726F7046696C652E696E692220225B4444695D22C2B6496620225B4444695D22202


That confirms it: **it's not encryption, just hex-encoded UTF-8.** Each pair of hex digits is one byte of text, so `46 69 6C 65` is `File`. The prefix `~VNU8:` tells VisualNEO Win 26 that what follows is UTF-8 in hex. Your v21 files stored the same text in plain ANSI.

Decoded, your sample reads (with `¶` marking line breaks, which is the separator VisualNEO uses inside `ObjAction`):

```
FileExists "[TempDir]DragDropFile.ini" "[DDi]"
If "[DDi]" "=" "True"
hpwIniRead "[TempDir]DragDropFile.ini" "General" "Title" "" "[ixi]"
SetVar "[LoadedVideo]" "[ixi]"
GoSub "LoadVideo"
EndIf
FileExists "[TempDir]Drag3DropFile.ini" "[DDi]"
If "[DDi]" "=" "True"
hpwIniRead "[TempDir]DrageDropFile.ini" "General" "Title" "" "[ixi]"
FileErase "[TempDir]Drag3DropFile.ini"
.SetVar "[LoadedVideo]" "[ixi]"
.GoSub "LoadVideo"
.EndIf
...............
.hpwIniRead "[TempDir]DragDropFile.ini" "General" "Title" "" "[ixi]"
.AlertBox "" "[ixi]"
.FileErase "[TempDir]DragDropFile.ini"
.GoSub "[ixi]"
.EndIf
```

The leading dots are just indentation. The `C2B6` you keep seeing is the UTF-8 encoding of `¶`.

**Decoding a whole file**

This Python script decodes every `~VNU8:` block in a pub and writes a readable copy, leaving the original untouched:

```python
import re, sys

src = sys.argv[1]
dst = src + ".decoded.txt"

with open(src, "r", encoding="utf-8", errors="replace") as f:
    text = f.read()

def decode(m):
    raw = bytes.fromhex(m.group(1))
    return raw.decode("utf-8", errors="replace").replace("¶", "\n    ")

out = re.sub(r"~VNU8:([0-9A-Fa-f]+)", decode, text)

with open(dst, "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    f.write(out)
print("Wrote", dst)
```

Run it with `python decode_pub.py "MyProject.pub"`.

If a pub file itself isn't UTF-8 (older files sometimes aren't), change `encoding="utf-8"` on the first `open` to `"cp1253"` (Greek) or `"cp1252"`.

**Two cautions**

- The decoded file is for reading only. Don't load it back into VisualNEO, because v26 expects its own format.
- Your v21 originals stay the safest backup. Since v26 reads the encoded files natively, the projects should open and run normally in the editor.

I can also write a small tkinter tool that decodes a pub with a file picker, if you'd prefer that to the command line.

Thanks.

.