From: "Randy McLaughlin" <cctalk at
randy482.com>
---snip---
It works for the largest base, even for those that are just now ready to
learn.
I am not advocating winzip as a perfect system, just a system that fits my
personal desire to spread archives to as many as want to download them.
Randy
www.s100-manuals.com
Hi Randy
For what you are doing, providing data to users, you are
doing the right thing. For an archive, it is the wrong thing.
For an archive, one should have the least and simplest
amount of encoding or remoteness from the original as
possible. Feeding the information into a form such as a zip
does not meet that criteria.
Providing data to the users in the most universal and current
format is the proper thing for an archivist to do in many
cases ( like you do ). Still, you have shut out many MAC
users and some of those that are so far in the past that
they are still running on a 8080 CP/M machine.
Imagine that some future archivist digs up Sellams library.
He must first realize that he needs something that interprets
x86 instructions to unwind the encoding. He then has to figure
out what the purpose of the data was.
Many here have made the assumption that the information would
smoothly be moved along to the next current media and retranslated
to the next handy compaction or encapsulation tool.
The real world isn't like that. There will be gaps in the
maintenance. For many reasons, like budgets or just apathy.
A good archivist need to do the best to anticipate this
and consider this as part of their strategy.
Dwight