At 10:36 AM 2/9/03 -0600, Robert Patterson wrote: >I'm gradually relinquishing the notion that a hard-copy is necessary for >long-term archive. PDF is robust and portable and is ubiquitous enough >that it will be supported in some form as long as there are computers.
Yow. My friend Greg Sanford is Vermont's state archivist, and he'd lose even more hair if he heard you say that! So called "permanent" digital archives just don't exist. The upgrading of hardware and software and the obsoleting of previous hardware, software, and formats continues so quickly that archives only 10 and 20 years old have become unreadable. It requires not only the software, but hardware that will run the software. Adobe is no more a permanent fixture in the software world than any other company ... and even if it were, on what hardware would those files be stored? On line, then? And with what backup? (Anybody else a victim of one of the now-defunct online disk storage companies?) For now, paper remains the only real archiving medium. Much as I'd like it to be otherwise, we haven't stepped over the threshhold to permanent storage of virtual copies. Here: http://maltedmedia.com/books/papers/sl-archv.html Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
