3 Nov
2011
3 Nov
'11
12:33 a.m.
On 3 Nov 2011, at 03:57, Geoffrey Reed wrote:
"Preserving software is not a one-click process
although the Analyser has
advanced features built in that help working on a disk very fast.
Nevertheless, in the hands of an untrained person, the analyser will not be
of much use."
-
What is the use of providing software, hardware and a -supposedly- open disk
image format when one cannot apparently create that disk image format
(presuming it was designed to be a universal image archive format) with the
supplied software? If it will be added later, that is great.
Ah. Okay, this is mainly down to a misunderstanding, though I freely admit that is likely
our fault.
The analyser being talked about here is not part of the personal edition of KryoFlux. It
is a tool that we at SPS developed to help with our preservation work. The only way it
really relates to KryoFlux is that it is offered as part of a product offered to entities
(by KryoFlux the company) such as large libraries and archives. It does allow production
of IPF files - but this format is SPS related and KryoFlux does not produce these.
However, we did recently add support to KryoFlux to write them. "The analyser"
currently helps fund our preservation work more than the personal edition of KryoFlux
does.
KryoFlux contains it's own "analyser", which does all the flux transition
decoding and format conversion, and the GUI visualises that data. KryoFlux currently
produces (other than sector images) "stream files", which is raw flux transition
data. This is format KryoFlux users will be interested in for capture and storage. This is
what KryoFlux produces, and there are now even independent decoders available.
Why two formats? They are used for very different things. Once is a raw flux transition
transfer and storage file used for KryoFlux, the other is a post-processed file format for
describing disk formats (incl. copy protection) used by SPS.
It's confusing, but I hope that clears things up...
Kieron
P.S. Sorry for the double-postings! The recent ones I posted yesterday from an email
account that was not subscribed (at the time I posted) to the list.