RTF and TXT compared to LRF?

[RWood]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Agreed. LRF for reading, but an "open" format such as RTF or HTML for long-term storage. I don't know what I'll be reading my books on in 10 years time, but I can pretty sure I'll be able to convert any of these formats to whatever it may be. Unfortunately I can't say that about LRF!

Too true Harry, too true. Once upon a time it was thought that any data stored in the DBF format (used by dBase, FoxBASE, Clipper, etc.) would be safe and readable. Now I need converters to load that data even into Excel.

The moral of the story is to keep your library as device and program independent as possible. If this means that you have to go back in five years and convert it all to XYZ standard, then do it. Just as we have migrated our data from 5.25" floppies to 3.5" floppies, to tape backups, to 100 Meg Zip disks, to CDs, to DVDs; we also have to ensure that the form and format of that data is also usable.