11 Nov
2004
11 Nov
'04
2:45 p.m.
I'm aware of someone that is looking to get some of the books they
publish into a modern format. Curently the data exists in such
formats as IBM Mag Cards and Scenicwriter, as well as other formats.
Does anyone know of anyway of converting these two formats into
something like RTF?
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
11 Nov
11 Nov
11:32 p.m.
At 08:45 PM 11/11/04 -0800, you wrote:
I'm aware of someone that is looking to get some of
the books they
publish into a modern format. Curently the data exists in such
formats as IBM Mag Cards and Scenicwriter, as well as other formats.
Does anyone know of anyway of converting these two formats into
something like RTF?
If they published the books then probably the easiest way to get them into modern
formats is to OCR the books. I doubt you're going to be able to find anything to read
the Scenicwriter and IBM Mag cards.
Joe
12 Nov
12 Nov
2:05 a.m.
At 08:45 PM 11/11/04 -0800, you wrote:
Actually the company that apparently made Scenicwriter still sells
software that can handle the files, but I don't think it can convert
them. The IBM Mag cards on the other hand...
The interesting thing is they're looking for people to type the books
into the computer rather than OCR them. And yes, there has already
been quite a bit of discussion on if OCRing them wouldn't make more
sense.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
I'm aware of someone that is looking to get
some of the books they
publish into a modern format. Curently the data exists in such
formats as IBM Mag Cards and Scenicwriter, as well as other formats.
Does anyone know of anyway of converting these two formats into
something like RTF?
If they published the books then probably the easiest way to get
them into modern formats is to OCR the books. I doubt you're going
to be able to find anything to read the Scenicwriter and IBM Mag
cards.
Joe 
2:20 a.m.
>>>> "Zane" == Zane H Healy
<healyzh(a)aracnet.com> writes:
> At 08:45 PM 11/11/04 -0800, you wrote:
>> I'm aware of someone that is looking to get some of the books
>> they publish into a modern format. Curently the data exists in
>> such formats as IBM Mag Cards and Scenicwriter, as well as other
>> formats. Does anyone know of anyway of converting these two
>> formats into something like RTF?
> If they published the books then probably the easiest way to get
> them into modern formats is to OCR the books. I doubt you're going
> to be able to find anything to read the Scenicwriter and IBM Mag
> cards.
>
> Joe
Zane> Actually the company that apparently made Scenicwriter still
Zane> sells software that can handle the files, but I don't think it
Zane> can convert them. The IBM Mag cards on the other hand...
Zane> The interesting thing is they're looking for people to type the
Zane> books into the computer rather than OCR them. And yes, there
Zane> has already been quite a bit of discussion on if OCRing them
Zane> wouldn't make more sense.
Interesting.
This reminds me very strongly of "Travels in Computerland" by Ben
R. Schneider. He went through this sort of struggle back around 1973,
trying to figure out how to convert several thousand pages of
reference book into a computer database. The eventual solution was to
type it and then scan the typed pages.
Nowadays the answer would be different, but it's curious that it
hasn't changed as much as I would expect.
paul
2:38 a.m.
Interesting.
This reminds me very strongly of "Travels in Computerland" by Ben
R. Schneider. He went through this sort of struggle back around 1973,
trying to figure out how to convert several thousand pages of
reference book into a computer database. The eventual solution was to
type it and then scan the typed pages.
Nowadays the answer would be different, but it's curious that it
hasn't changed as much as I would expect.
paul
I think part of the problem might be a bit of lack of understanding
of the problem. I'm waiting for more details, but from the initial
details I've gotten it sounds as if they view formats that are as
little as 8 years old as being unreadable. I suspect part of the
reason they don't think it can be OCR'd is due to the page layouts.
Of course then there is a book that I provided the computer support
for. It started on a Kaypro PC (something like an IBM AT clone), and
finished on a P90 laptop. In the end a 1200dpi printer had to be
purchased as the book was written in WordPerfect (mostly WordPerfect
for Windows 5.2, which is the format it was finished in), and by the
time it was finished no one could handle the format. The book was
printed at 1200dpi and scanned, then the scans were used for the
printing. The big issue was the high degree of formatting (it is
almost totally in columns, and somewhere over 1200 pages), and yes, I
tried to get the book shifted to a more modern program back when it
could have been done.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
2:51 a.m.
On Friday 12 November 2004 11:38, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>Interesting.
Of course then there is a book that I provided the
computer support
for. It started on a Kaypro PC (something like an IBM AT clone), and
finished on a P90 laptop. In the end a 1200dpi printer had to be
purchased as the book was written in WordPerfect (mostly WordPerfect
for Windows 5.2, which is the format it was finished in), and by the
time it was finished no one could handle the format. The book was
I just finished pulling a few books off of floppies (5.25 and 3.5) that
were written in WP5.1. I sent them back tot he author as plain text.
Lotus wordpro had the filters needed to load and convert the files.
--
Collector of vintage computers http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600
Machines to trade http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600/trade.html
Open Source Weekend http://www.osw.ca
5:44 a.m.
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Joe R. wrote:
If they published the books then probably the
easiest way to get them into modern formats is to OCR the books. I doubt you're going
to be able to find anything to read the Scenicwriter and IBM Mag cards.
My friend David (non-lister) has a working IBM mag word processor
of some sort, belts or something, I'll ask what model.
The best it will do of couse is to type out the pages, there's
no data abstraction available (eg. copy or transmit).
5:58 a.m.
I got an email from the head guy a little bit ago, and I'm still more than a
bit stunned. As the formats were determined be "Obsolete" the machines,
software, AND all data files were destroyed. The books are the only form in
which the material still exists!
Zane
6:18 a.m.
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Zane H. Healy wrote:
I got an email from the head guy a little bit ago, and
I'm still more than a
bit stunned. As the formats were determined be "Obsolete" the machines,
software, AND all data files were destroyed. The books are the only form in
which the material still exists!
I can't think of a better example of the stupidness of consumer
capitalism.
Consumption and obsolescence should be undesirable side-effects
of human living, not the core reason for existence.
To complete the picture, they should load the resulting debris
into a low-fuel-efficiency car, spend an hour or so in traffic,
on their way to dumping it all in a landfill leaking into the
local water table. To save money.
6:42 a.m.
At 02:18 PM 11/12/2004, you wrote:
I can't think of a better example of the stupidness
of consumer
capitalism. Consumption and obsolescence should be undesirable side-effects
of human living, not the core reason for existence.
Maybe I'm too close to the issue, but I continue to grow more and
more overwhelmed by the daunting task of archiving and preserving
old data. Certainly any one of us has faced these sorts of issues
many times in the course of our collecting and preservation. A book
publisher has little financial incentive to archive electronic versions
of old books. Someone else, some other business with different motives,
will need to do it.
A good friend of mine, a C-64 era author, wrote his C-64 books on an old
Atari system. He threw out the manuscript floppies a long time ago,
thinking no one would want them. Collectors have re-scanned his
works, I believe.
I'm a big fan of my state's "open records" laws. Yet they mandate
only preserving records for seven years. The law no doubt dates from
the practicalities of preserving massive amounts of paper. It hasn't
been updated for electronic records, which would be far easier to
preserve indefinitely. But my state's laws say that every document
(paper letter, email, etc.) created by an employee, elected or
appointed official is presumed to be a public record (within
the limits of a handful of allowed exceptions.)
Yet in reality, local government agencies can't even retrieve email
stored on previous versions of Windows Exchange servers, nor can they
read backups from older versions of Windows without reviving old
hardware and software.
In my own explorations of putting local government records on
my community web site, I discovered that the County had used a
8-inch-floppy-based word processing system to type the minutes
of its Board of Supervisors meetings. Once the seven years had
expired, and the bound book versions of the minutes had been
produced, no one saved the floppies. Dang! It would have been
intensely useful to have saved these minutes. I see an ever-growing
window of lost experience as electronic records are not preserved
and accessible.
There's not much use in cursing the short-sighted who destroy
the data. If you want to save it, Someone will need to step forward
to do so. You know all about "The Little Red Hen", right?
Enterprise-wide Google-like technology will be present and integral
in many organizations in the years to come. We'll only be able to
index what we've saved and kept in online storage.
To me, the upside of electronic record preservation is the
other side of the Orwellian sword. Just as Orwell never imagined
that people would voluntarily put view-screens in every room,
did he imagine that technology could be a way to keep an eye
on government?
- John
8:56 a.m.
I concede to most of your points. It's a big job, and
the proliferation of incompatible media isn't always just
consumerism, though it often is. It's certainly all a big mess.
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, John Foust wrote:
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:42:35 -0600
From: John Foust <jfoust(a)threedee.com>
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Old Typesetting files
At 02:18 PM 11/12/2004, you wrote:
I can't think of a better example of the
stupidness of consumer
capitalism. Consumption and obsolescence should be undesirable side-effects
of human living, not the core reason for existence.
Maybe I'm too close to the issue, but I continue to grow more and
more overwhelmed by the daunting task of archiving and preserving
old data. Certainly any one of us has faced these sorts of issues
many times in the course of our collecting and preservation. A book
publisher has little financial incentive to archive electronic versions
of old books. Someone else, some other business with different motives,
will need to do it.
A good friend of mine, a C-64 era author, wrote his C-64 books on an old
Atari system. He threw out the manuscript floppies a long time ago,
thinking no one would want them. Collectors have re-scanned his
works, I believe.
I'm a big fan of my state's "open records" laws. Yet they mandate
only preserving records for seven years. The law no doubt dates from
the practicalities of preserving massive amounts of paper. It hasn't
been updated for electronic records, which would be far easier to
preserve indefinitely. But my state's laws say that every document
(paper letter, email, etc.) created by an employee, elected or
appointed official is presumed to be a public record (within
the limits of a handful of allowed exceptions.)
Yet in reality, local government agencies can't even retrieve email
stored on previous versions of Windows Exchange servers, nor can they
read backups from older versions of Windows without reviving old
hardware and software.
In my own explorations of putting local government records on
my community web site, I discovered that the County had used a
8-inch-floppy-based word processing system to type the minutes
of its Board of Supervisors meetings. Once the seven years had
expired, and the bound book versions of the minutes had been
produced, no one saved the floppies. Dang! It would have been
intensely useful to have saved these minutes. I see an ever-growing
window of lost experience as electronic records are not preserved
and accessible.
There's not much use in cursing the short-sighted who destroy
the data. If you want to save it, Someone will need to step forward
to do so. You know all about "The Little Red Hen", right?
Enterprise-wide Google-like technology will be present and integral
in many organizations in the years to come. We'll only be able to
index what we've saved and kept in online storage.
To me, the upside of electronic record preservation is the
other side of the Orwellian sword. Just as Orwell never imagined
that people would voluntarily put view-screens in every room,
did he imagine that technology could be a way to keep an eye
on government?
- John
7128
days inactive
7129
days old
11 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
kenziem＠sympatico.ca -
pkoning＠equallogic.com -
rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com -
tomj＠wps.com