On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 16:39 -0700, Fred Cisin wrote: Bah, you just need each archive to contain embedded Java source that can decode the archive's contents... ;-) There should be some set of standard fields that are common to all disks though (surfaces and tracks being two that spring to mind), then there'll be another set that's specific to a particular type of disk. If it's all semantic data as part of the metadata section then it doesn't matter so much. Utils will be able to handle a subset of all possible formats (which I suppose is infinite), but enough semantic data should be present to enable a human to deduce the format from the data and write a parser if needs be. I wouldn't expect we need to go as far as including the spec for the format within the data itself, but that's kind of nice too (IMHO storage costs being what they are, it doesn't matter so much if a 160KB floppy image grows another 10-20KB of ASCII metadata / spec really) It's getting late here though, so I'm probably talking more crap than usual :) cheers Jules

And herein lies the core of the electronic/data part of the problem. Everything is perfectly orthogonal, except for the exceptions. And there are so many exceptions as to rule the roost. The implication in this thread is there is some single computer-based solution to solving the world's data loss problem. It's silly on it's face. Look how hard it is with the black square things with the rotating magnetic mylar inside, even of just one size. I think that the idea of always saving all data is naive. Even within narrow bounds, say electronicizing printed manuals, there are all sorts of compromises and data losses (resolution, color, texture, ad nauseum) but the usage is often nerdly, not cultural, eg. I wanna know what IC17 is and will interpolate between the moire pattern artifacts to find out. The human eyeball/brain is fixing the errors. I predict that there will be no single solution to the current crop of problems, which will expand with time. Funny, I was making this argument in an automobile list, where there's a similar implied goal of a magic fuel, motor, etc that will "solve transportation problems". I think it's clear that transportation is a cultural system, involving cars, trains, public trans, urban planning, walkable neighborhoods, etc. One size does not fit all. The problem has to be handled case by case. While certainly lots of sharing is great, it might be that (made up examples) Cromemco CDOS archiving is different from Cromemco CP/M and other CP/Ms though there is overlap, etc and it's all certainly different than archiving 1/2" tape, or paper tapes, or disk packs, or EPROMs. A unified system seems like a 1890 solution. Give a small boy a hammer, and everything looks like a nail.

Tom Jennings wrote: ... and if your tools ar WinDoze, then everything looks like a thumb.