Extract text from Inform 7 source files (NI)
To convert NI source files to another format, you need iGO Navigation or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "GPS Navigation Map Index" file type, you need software like iGO Navigation or a similar tool.
The .NI file extension is primarily used as an iGO Navigation Index File by NNG for its iGO GPS navigation software. These files store indexed map data to speed up location searches on GPS devices. Secondarily, .NI files serve as Inform 7 Source Code Files created by Graham Nelson for interactive fiction, Nikon NIS-Elements microscopy image files from Nikon, and proprietary Nintendo game data files.
Opening these files depends entirely on their origin. Inform 7 .NI files are plain text and can be opened in the Inform 7 IDE or any text editor like Notepad++. Conversely, iGO, Nikon, and Nintendo .NI files are strictly proprietary.
Users often need to convert .NI files because they are unreadable without highly specific, often expensive or embedded hardware environments. The iGO map files are locked to GPS hardware and cannot be natively browsed on a PC. Nikon microscopy files require specialized laboratory software, creating friction when sharing imaging data with researchers who only have standard image viewers.
For Inform 7 files, converting to standard TXT or compiling to Z8 or .GLULX is the standard workflow. For Nikon images, converting to TIFF or JPG is ideal for sharing, though some multi-dimensional metadata may be lost. iGO and Nintendo data files typically cannot be converted into standard consumer formats due to heavy encryption and proprietary structuring.
Because these formats are mostly closed and proprietary, standard online converters usually fail to process them. Just drag and drop your file onto convert.guru to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible. Even if the file is heavily encoded, our analysis tools can inspect the binary or extract underlying text to help you identify exactly which type of .NI file you possess.
Convert.Guru analyzes your NI file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted VI, APPLE, HEIC and TGA files.
If you want to convert NI file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use iGO Navigation or similar software from the "Navigation Index Data Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to NI, try iGO Navigation or another comparable tool in the "Navigation Index Data Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our NI converter.