Nico de Jong wrote: Storage availability and data transfer rates are so much better than they once were. I can't help but feel that at some point the best formats are going to encapsulate both scanned images and raw text - the images will be as faithful reproductions of the original as possible (greyscale, and including full colour where necessary) whilst each page also has a plain-text transcribed version attached. That way you get something that's as close to the original 'look and feel' of the document as possible (and allows you to cross-reference between the electronic version and a real copy), but you also get modern abilities that come with having text that can be searched, copied electronically etc. Lots of historians seem concerned about preserving the raw content - which is fantastic. But pulling that data out of its original context feels a little like running an emulator versus the real hardware. cheers J.

Alexandre Souza wrote: It does, but hardly anybody makes use of it - you either get a document containing only scanned pages (and possibly some form of contents menu), or a document containing "plain text" where the original scans have been thrown away. It's very rare that the two are seen combined, presumably because outside of the context of historical preservation there's no real justification to do so; in those cases the raw content itself is more important than how it's actually arranged. -- (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

Alexandre Souza wrote: Bad example, BTW; most ripped TV shows have thrown away resolution, framerate, or both. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/