Disk Drive Documents

We're not in a hurry, yet, so we should look for a format suitable for everyone. The reason document publishers like PDF is that it allows you to view the document, print it, print excerpts, search, and so on, yet doesn't let you extract text from it. Of course, you can output it to PCL, convert the PCL to BMP, convert the BMP to TIF, then run it through an OCR processor to create clear text. The reason I like it is that it allows me to keep the OLD data books I have in my technical library on the shelves gathering dust except when I want information that's not in the new ones. I tolerate that it only works under WINDOWS, and I tolerate that it won't process other file formats, and I tolerate that I can't extract a quote when I need to. It has served me well, though, I have to admit. The problem I see is that since the PDF is so easy to process for the average Win95 user, even though that may not include everyone in this forum, there's a PDF viewer for LINUX, just as there's one for various other *NIX types. I don't know whether ther's one for OS8 or whatever the PDP8 users have, but I see a potential problem when it comes to finding a "better" tool. There may be a tool which YOU like better, for whatever reasons, and there may be one which I like better for whatever reasons I have, but it's unlikely someone will host a site on which we can put this document set in half a dozen different formats. (BTW, there's another manual, now, i.e. the MITSUBISHI 4894, or whatever they called their DS 8" drive back in the late '70's.)

As for finding a "home" for this data, I think the "unofficial CP/M site" might be the place, though I've not yet contacted the site owner. Many CP/M-ers will at one time or another need this data.