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Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

blog.miris.design

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Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#121

Post by photojosh »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #115
brians wrote: post #58

“all the binary formats of the 1990s can be opened today” Oh, sweet summer child. Scribe/mss. Koalapad. A bunch of Apple 2GS, Apple 3, and Lisa formats. Lotus Improv. The points about semantics and authenticity are wonderful, but I think the presumption that all formats can be opened is mistaken exactly because those that can’t be opened become effectively invisible and lost.

Emulation can bring them back in a limited fashion. Though obviously un-marrying them from the original system environment and making them accessible outside of the VM can be a challenge.

This just gave me the completely random idea... (as someone whose parents used to have tons of ClarisWorks docs)... build OCR into the emulator. :)

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#122

Post by CRConrad »

paxys wrote: post #96
thomascgalvin wrote: post #56

This argument feels ... not quite like a strawman, but more pedantic than I think it needs to be. I don't think anyone really argues that everything should be plain text, even if that's an easy shorthand. The real argument is "use the simplest, most open format possible." Nobody is suggesting you go through all of your photos, transcribe your emotional reaction to each picture, and then delete the image. But, if you…

> I don't think anyone really argues that everything should be plain text, even if that's an easy shorthand Pretty sure this article is a rebuttal to the front page post on HN yesterday which said exactly that

> Pretty sure this article is a rebuttal to the front page post on HN yesterday which said exactly that

* It may be an attempt at a rebuttal, but in actuality it mostly agrees. But yeah, rather obviously in reaction to that article.

* That article didn't say quite exactly that everything should be plain text; only that most text should be plain text.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#123

Post by ciphol »

alanbernstein wrote: post #18
ciphol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the "pro plain text" link posted earlier used lots of formatting. I don't see why pure plain text is better in any way than plain text with formatting, like a simplified form of HTML ( , , , some kind of table formatting, etc). The latter is non-proprietary, easily read and diffed, and communicates better than pure text. Images have their own value, as do animations and video on occasion. Here matters bec…

As the pro-plain-text post said: HTML, Markdown, JSON, LaTeX, and many other standard formats, are just plain text.

It depends. XML is generally not human-readable, it's got way too much programming code in relation to the amount of human content. But a simple subset of HTML is definitely human-readable.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#124

Post by dhosek »

js2 wrote: post #46
dhosek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bumped into this recently with a couple Kodak PhotoCDs I uncovered last month. Trying to get the pictures out of the PCD files is turning out to be more challenging than I expected.

I converted mine years ago using iPhoto but according to Wikipedia, there are several programs that can do the conversion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_CD#Converting_Photo_CD_i...

iPhoto no longer exists and the replacement, Photos doesn't support it. A free command-line tool I found doesn't run any without signing and I need to find the dependent library for JPEG handling to use it. Other apps are paid.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#125

Post by dhosek »

mro_name wrote: post #47
dhosek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bumped into this recently with a couple Kodak PhotoCDs I uncovered last month. Trying to get the pictures out of the PCD files is turning out to be more challenging than I expected.

what was the issue - hardware access (a CD reader), bit rot or else? The image format was jpeg if I remember correctly, wasn't it?

It's a custom undocumented format with a lot of oddities to it (particularly in its color profile handling, or more precisely lack thereof).

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#126

Post by dhosek »

deltarholamda wrote: post #43
dhosek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bumped into this recently with a couple Kodak PhotoCDs I uncovered last month. Trying to get the pictures out of the PCD files is turning out to be more challenging than I expected.

Is ImageMagick not doing the job? It's been a while, but Photoshop used to be pretty adept at this as well.

I haven't checked ImageMagick to see if it supports PCD, I'll have to see if I can do it in my wife's PhotoShop license.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#127

Post by dhosek »

dhosek wrote: post #124
js2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I converted mine years ago using iPhoto but according to Wikipedia, there are several programs that can do the conversion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_CD#Converting_Photo_CD_i...

iPhoto no longer exists and the replacement, Photos doesn't support it. A free command-line tool I found doesn't run any without signing and I need to find the dependent library for JPEG handling to use it. Other apps are paid.

And an online service that claims to do it only extracts the lowest resolution scan from the file.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#128

Post by CRConrad »

wl wrote: post #67
amiga1200 wrote: post #16

The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in plain text.

In a complicated, undocumented format that had to be reverse-engineered (Sumerian/Akkadian/Hittite cuneiform).

And those clay tablets were all craggly-surfaced and far too thick to fit in my DVD player! Shabby archivists, those Babylonians.

Re: Don't write just in plain text (longevity vs. authenticity)

#130

Post by dhosek »

dhosek wrote: post #126
deltarholamda wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ImageMagick not doing the job? It's been a while, but Photoshop used to be pretty adept at this as well.

I haven't checked ImageMagick to see if it supports PCD, I'll have to see if I can do it in my wife's PhotoShop license.

And ImageMagick will only do the lowest resolution images from the files.
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