Quote:
Originally Posted by snipenekkid
BTW, a file being 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit matter not one iota. It's the proprietary nature if those files are somehow encrypted. For the most part files today use a modified HTML and/or XML format and as such are just text. But nothing about the "bits" matter for the file itself, that is only about the OS. Nothing in a 256K-bit OS will stop it from reading a file created in an 8-bit application.
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I'm an IT worker, I understand the difference. The problem is finding progams that are compatible to open such files, given a few generation skips.
The files from my dad's win3.1 box opened absolutely perfectly on Window's built it Write word processor.
If it had not been for WordPerfect, which apparently still has some legacy support built into it, I cold not have opened those old DOS files. Even Office XP didn't do the trick, no luck with Staroffice or OpenOffice either. I had already tried Office XP on WinXP. I was on the verge of installing win98 in a VM and finding a copy of Office 97 or something like that when I got Wordperfect to convert it.
Some 16-bit era programs already don't work on 32 bit WinXP...the problem just magnifies with the transition to 64-bit. I think things will continue to get worse in this respect. A lot of DOS and Win95 era software already requires DOSbox emulation or some other virtualization, and legacy software, to work.
I still say your odds of the paperback "working" or being in good working order, are better over a decade or two of continued technological advances.