Re: the incompetence astounds me
- From: Bill White <billw@[redacted]>
- Subject: Re: the incompetence astounds me
- Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:10:11 -0600
On Mon Oct 27 2003 at 19:30, "Stewart C. Russell" <scruss@[redacted]> said:
> And this is where we found the problem; all the typesetters used
> massively arcane publishing systems. Not merely were the file
> formats weird (ever dealt with Penta, 3B2, or Miles-33?), but even
> seemed to vary for different installations of the same system
> (Miles-33, again).
MOPAS files stored on reel-to-reel tapes - whee!
[Moderator: A Google search on "mopas typesetting" (without quotes)
turns up online references to this old format from as far back as the 1970s.
Notable in the results were multiple references to projects that
were trying to convert from MOPAS to more modern formats; and the apparent
scarcity of documentation (on the Net, anyway) of the actual format details.
The thought of what might be in store for the huge collection of *current*
documents in another 30 years, if inadequate attention is given to format
obsolescence problems, gives many digital librarians shivers that outdo
any ordinary Halloween scare :-) - JMO]
bw
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