[SCC_Active_Members] Digital Data Format problems

[Randall Neff]

At the last meeting, Henry was demonstrating saving PowerPoint files
into his demo content managment system.  I was concerned about
saving files in secret, proprietorial formats.  Also, the metadata did
not record WHICH version PowerPoint format.

The British National Archives has the same sort of problems, and
Microsoft is going to save the day through virtualization technology.
Of course, you need a copy of every Microsoft OS and application
version to make it work.
The article doesn't mention different floppy disk sizes, and
ignores other operating systems and non Microsoft applications.

 Warning of data ticking time bomb
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6265976.stm


My suggestion for SPG content is we store it in multiple forms,
while we have access to the proprietary software application.
So we save the original proprietary binary format, a image sequence format
such as .png, and a text format like .txt or .rtf (for searching).

Another problem for future display is that
some document formats assume specific fonts and font metrics are available in
the computer excuting the application.

Randall.