Quote:
Originally Posted by rmclachlan
A lot of data from the 1980s effectively no longer exists becuse it was stored on media no longer usable, or where there is no equivalent today. If you think this is not a problem then you are very complacent. We are not talking about in two years but perhaps ten years or more. A major problem with proprierty formats and all digital technology. I have 5" floppies but not hardware to read them, sure not impossible but not easy to access. Also you do not need to port or reformat a book.
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Right. A problem which was recognized at least by the early 2000s, and one that was addressed when
ISO 32000 was created.
Pretty much all book formats from lit onwards are just wrappers around html, so no problem there either.
Yes, people don't always learn from mistakes, but that does not mean they never do. Anyway, constructing a machine reader for your 5" floppies should be fairly trivial if you have a bit of money. More likely the disks will be demagnetized by now, though.