What makes a mac better?

-hh wrote:
On Nov 13, 8:08Â*am, Wolfgang Weisselberg
wrote:
-hh wrote:
On Nov 6, 5:16Â*am, DanP wrote:
That was epic. Didn't have the patience to read it all, but still, wow.
Unfortunately, simply being a long rant doesn't mean that it contains
factually correct content.

It also doesn't mean it does contain factually incorrect
content.

I was being kind. Unfortunately, your continued duplicity indicates
that I probably should have been more rude.

Well, to be rude: You were an idiot when you archived your
photos in powerpoint, and you were twice an idiot when you
didn't rectify the situation once you knew better. But maybe
you're simply unable to learn from your mistakes.

An often repeated claim and a bogus example 'file' as 'proof' ---
your obstinate tactic --- indicate only stubbornness, but not a
shred of factually correct content.

Sorry, but that's yet another lie on your part. The facts of the
matter are that this successfully retained file was a real document:
it was publicly presented in an industry symposia back in 1992. And
being a published paper, that is also why I also invested the
resources to retain it.

This changes ... nothing. Except that the document was
never meant for archival, just as glass plates standing in as
greenhouse glass aren't. (And yes, the latter happened.)


You're trying to make it sound like I've been orchestrating a grand
plan since 1992 to have purposefully created a 'lost' format just to
enter into a ****ing contest with you. Sorry, but you're simply not
that important.

No, that would imply you'd have brains enough to plan ahead
for 20 years, which you clearly didn't.


http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/ADPA-snipertrainer
...you'll find that it only returns one hit:

Let's complete the quote:
| But since you think that it will make a difference, I've taken a copy
| of the original file, revised its name to add a '.PPT' on the end and
| uploaded it to this address:

http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/ADPA-snipertrainer.ppt

So you ... "revised its name to add a '.PPT' on the end" and had
therefore to change the '.' to a '-'?

Yes, the revision included changing the prior '.' to a '-', which is
why the description stated **revise**, and not merely "added".

Â*Even Windows manages files with 2 '.' just fine!

Really? Every version of Windows since 1992?

Ever since they managed more than 8.3.

Note: Windows 3.1/3.11/3.11 for workgroups didn't. Only 95
and later did.
So they'd not work with "ADPA-snipertrainer.ppt" nor
"ADPA.snipertrainer", neither being 8.3 compliant. Poof!


Plus does this also
include all versions of Linux and Apache web servers too?

Yep. Even on FAT file systems. Which only an idiot would
run an apache webserver on top of.

Since this is not the case,

What is not the case?

Your filename does NOT work for every version of Windows
since 1992 either. 2 dots work whereever long filenames
work.

then a revision to have only a single "."
within the entire filename is the only approach that will have 100%
success in resolving the dot-delimeter complaint that you had
contrived.

Dig harder. You hole is not deep enough to cover the
incompetence yet.


What he missed was that the original file's name was not changed only
at the end to add the .PPT: Â*the original had a period in the middle,
and if two periods had been left intact in the filename, this could
have confused applications which have traditionally relied on periods
as a delimeter for file type identifiers.

Which application would that be, that didn't manage that, but
did manage longer files than 8.3?

You were already told it was Microsoft PowerPoint.

.... that created the file.
BTW: Applications care nothing at all about file names.

And in how far would it be relevant to PowerPoint?

See above. The lack of the 8.3 constraint was the free clue that it
was the version of PowerPoint that ran on Mac OS, not Windows.

So what's your 'every Windows since 1992' yammering about?


And why do you think everyone but *you* is unable to rename
files, when *you* are the one to deliver binary image files
as text/plain?

I never said that no one else could rename the file, so that's YA lie
from Wolfgang.

I didn't say you said so, I said you thought so.
But maybe that's a lie, too, and you don't think, you just
knee-jerk.


Similarly, he claimed "one can deliberately choose a file format
singularily unsuited to archival and then harping about that as if
that was the average or usual case." Â* Sorry, but that's a malicious
misrepresentation

So you're claiming some proprietary, closed, ever changing, not
supposed for image storage or interchange Microsoft format is an
average and usual case *for* *intelligent* *people* *to* *use*
*for* *the* *archival* *of* *images*?

No.

Then what's your point with that PP file? None?

The file format was what it was at its time of origin.

The white horse was white when you saw it. Yes.

Issues of how
to improve its archivability were simply not a consideration at that
time, and one simply cannot undo history to rectify that.

A normal person would recognize some day that some formats
are not archival quality and --- assuming some brains ---
transform the original into a more archival quality format.

Just like a normal person would some day recognoize that
a mildew-afflicted shoe box was not the best way to store
negatives and then --- assuming some brains --- do something
constructive about it.

and an attempt to "Monday Morning Quarterback" a
decision that was made back in 1992:

I'm judging the decision on what was known to one skilled in the
field in 1992.

Unfortunately, that's a critical error on your part.

Quite frankly, I also have my doubts that even the 'experts' were this
far along back in 1992 regarding long term data retention issues,
particularly including the recommendation to use JPEG for long term
archivability. Feel free to produce redundant published references
that discusses this issue that were disseminated in mainstream news
outlets back in this period (1992) which includes the JPEG
conclusion.

Again, you are not able to read what I wrote. I've been
*very* careful not nominating JPEG as image storage format
back then.


Â*But you'd certainly claim criticising a quarterback
repeatedly scoring own goals was "Monday Morning Quarterback"ing,
after all, the game was on Sunday and how *could* he *possibly*
have known which side was the wrong one.

Sorry, but you've just revealed that English isn't your primary
language and you're misapplying the colloquialism.

It's *very* well known that English isn't my primary
language, but it's good to know I can fool someone for so
long without even trying. Having said that: So criticising
a player for atrocious play is being a monday morning
quarterback, you haven't denied it-


the format then chosen *was*
what was believed at the time to be a 'good' format.

Belived by whom?

The generic business office user.

I see. So you'd ask J. Random Nigerian how to invest your
money, too?

As I said above, I have my doubts
that even the 'experts' were already recommending JPEGS for all
graphics as early as 1992, and it is going to require published
references to convince me otherwise.

And again you have been misreading me. This happens so
often that you either don't read what I write, are unable to
concentrate long enough on the text or are not understanding
the language you write in. Or maybe you do it on purpose.

But back to that format:
[...]
- were there multiple sources for writing and reading the format?
Â* Nope. Â*There's only one PP.

Except that what you're ignoring is that the software developers of
that period consistently provided full & transparent backwards
compatibility to their older file formats.

Or was that the impression of J Random Business User, who only
ever saw 3 programs?


[...]
- What were they thinking of using in 20 years to get their
Â* images? Â*PowerPoint 3.0?

PowerPoint 3.0 worked just fine in being backwards-compatible to v2.0

So did PowerPoint 4.0

You have NOT gotten the question. Again.


It wasn't until PowerPoint 98 (8.0) in 1998 that the backwards-
compatibility was broken.

And converters were made available.


It was a stupid idea evn in 1992, and at best you/they didn't know
any better. Â*Which made you/them singularly unsuited at the task.

Do feel free to show the "Save As JPEG" command in these Applications
to have provided any alternative approach.

Do feel free to READ WHAT I WRITE! BMP != JPEG. If you can't
export your PowerPoints to some simple format, then even J
Completely-Deranged Business User can't think that's good for
archival of photos.


Additionally, it seems nothing was learned in the mean time,
because no corrective action was taken. Â*(Nope, that wasn't
your point. Â*Your point was that even if you do everything right
you need some effort to keep the file formats in good shape.)

Logic Fail: an absence of discussion of corrective actions does not
constitute evidence that no corrective action ever took place.

So you either are throwing smoke grenades --- again --- or
you admit that your 'example' never was any problem.

A 'bad' one that
was known back in that day would have been "PFS:First Choice".
"Harvard Graphics" has also turned out to have been a bad one too, but
I don't know offhand if it was already obviously in decline by 1992.

The obvious format would have been BMP, version 3. Â*Simple,
robust, easy to implement a reader. Â*The only drawback is that
they're relatively large, compared to lossy compressed formats.

But was BMP available on the Mac back in 1992?

Yes. It's a file format. A trivial simple one.

And as critically, as a "Save As" option within PowerPoint?

If no, PP was not fit for archival, since you couldn't get
your photos back out.


JPEG was released *as* *a* *standard* in 1992.

Which meant that it was not adequately mature

It was. Though it wasn't common enough.

- - or had adequate
assurances that it would still be around in 20+ years - -

What part of "released *as* *a* *standard*" didn't you grasp?
The fact that I didn't write that the complete process how to
create and how to interpret a JPEG file was described in
painstaking detail, enabling any programmer to create his own
implementation from scratch --- even in 20+ years?

to have been
a serious consideration for a decision that was made back in 1992.

Now ponder why I said BMP.


It *still* works, ...

Yes, but that's a retrospective view:

Simple, easy to implement standards tend to have that feature.

you've picked the winner after
it has survived for 20 years. That's useless advice unless you also
have a time machine in your back pocket.

Name one open, free standard of 1992 or earlier that can't be
read today.

So why not JPEG in 1992? Â*Because the format was too new and
programs using it probably not widely available back then.

And I don't really recall BMP being supported back then by Macs, even
within Microsoft products. As such, your recommendation doesn't
appear to be one that would have been an available choice either.

So into what format could PP on Mac export photos and text?


The underlying point here is pretty simple: it isn't trivially easy to
predict the future, particularly in technology.

It's trivially easy to see when a format is *certainly*
not suitable as archival format. Â*Even if the year was 1992.
PowerPoint is a prime example. Â*Red flags everywhere.

Except that it only became evident as a problem six (6) years later,
when Microsoft dropped their backwards-compatibility to their earlier
file format without any particularly overt notification to their
customers.

It's like speeding with no seatbelt and no airbag. It'll get
you, even if it takes a couple years. Anyone with eyes can
see that.


Had one asked me back
in ~1980 the future direction of computer memory, I very well may have
predicted the bubble memory that Texas Instrument was using on their
"Silent 700" terminals. Â*Whoops.

And what does bubble memory (or any other physical storage format
that can store any sort of file formats) have to do with a file
format's suitability for archival?

It merely serves as YA example for how trying to predict the future
isn't an 'exact science'.

No, it's an example how *YOU* have been wrong about the future.
Not about people in general or 'exact science'.

The uncertainty of the future is what has
prevented archiving from being a trivial & easy activity.

Ah ... no.

-Wolfgang

On Nov 25, 6:09*pm, Wolfgang Weisselberg
wrote:
-hh wrote:
On Nov 13, 8:08*am, Wolfgang Weisselberg
wrote:
-hh wrote:
On Nov 6, 5:16*am, DanP wrote:
That was epic. Didn't have the patience to read it all, but still, wow.
Unfortunately, simply being a long rant doesn't mean that it contains
factually correct content.
It also doesn't mean it does contain factually incorrect
content.
I was being kind. *Unfortunately, your continued duplicity indicates
that I probably should have been more rude.

Well, to be rude: You were an idiot when you archived your
photos in powerpoint,...

Unfortunately, JPEG wasn't a viable option back in 1992, as you've
since discovered. And you've also not provided any concrete
suggestion for what should have been used back in 1992. And you've
not provided any documentation from "experts" from that period for
what specific format was being recommended for use back in 1992.

All you have are lame insult attempts.


... and you were twice an idiot when you
didn't rectify the situation once you knew better.

Yes, rectifying such situations (in time) is a consideration, but
that's a maintenance expense ... which was a point that I had raised
already.

Of course, if you want to continue to claim that I've been an idiot
and that this data file has been irrecoverably lost, then please be
willing to back up your assertion with a bet, specifically one of
sufficient magnitude that it will easily cover the expenses of mailing
you a hardcopy.

I think 20 Euros would be more than adequate to make it worth my
while. Sorry, but I'm not going to extend credit to you; send one
blue 20EUR note in the mail to my domain's NJ address and include what
mailing address you want the material sent to and it will be promptly
on its way.


*But maybe
you're simply unable to learn from your mistakes.

YA insult attempt.



An often repeated claim and a bogus example 'file' as 'proof' ---
your obstinate tactic --- indicate only stubbornness, but not a
shred of factually correct content.
Sorry, but that's yet another lie on your part. *The facts of the
matter are that this successfully retained file was a real document:
it was publicly presented in an industry symposia back in 1992. *And
being a published paper, that is also why I also invested the
resources to retain it.

This changes ... nothing. *Except that the document was
never meant for archival, just as glass plates standing in as
greenhouse glass aren't. *(And yes, the latter happened.)

Except that it goes to illustrate my point that 'ordinary'
contemporary items are disappearing from "Uncle Bob's Photo
Collection", because Uncle Bob wasn't necessarily proactive in his
file format selection. Golly, he might have even used one of those
non-JPEG "RAW" formats, which contain proprietary elements and are
not Open Standards, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_ima...tandardization


You're trying to make it sound like I've been orchestrating a grand
plan since 1992 to have purposefully created a 'lost' format just to
enter into a ****ing contest with you. *Sorry, but you're simply not
that important.

No, that would imply you'd have brains enough to plan ahead
for 20 years, which you clearly didn't.

YA insult attempt.

Now did I perform due diligence in my maintenance of this particular
data file?
You don't know, because I haven't made a public statement: all I've
done is provided the "pre-maintenance" data file.
You would be wise to avoid making any further baseless claims.

Don't think that I haven't noticed that you still haven't been
successful in salvaging the file, despite all of your arrogance: you
instead try to shift the blame to a decision made 20 years ago that
simply can't be undone no matter how much you bluster and try to sling
insults.

And of course, this file's original version isn't quite completely
useless: it is an educational tool for people who think that they
know better.

As I've said, if you want to continue to make your baseless claim that
this data file has been irrecoverably lost, then please be willing to
back up your assertion with a bet, specifically one of sufficient
magnitude that it will easily cover my expenses to mail you a copy:
20EUR.



http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/ADPA-snipertrainer
...you'll find that it only returns one hit:
Let's complete the quote:
| But since you think that it will make a difference, I've taken a copy
| of the original file, revised its name to add a '.PPT' on the end and
| uploaded it to this address:
http://www.huntzinger.com/photo/ADPA-snipertrainer.ppt
So you ... "revised its name to add a '.PPT' on the end" and had
therefore to change the '.' to a '-'?
Yes, the revision included changing the prior '.' to a '-', which is
why the description stated **revise**, and not merely "added".
*Even Windows manages files with 2 '.' just fine!
Really? *Every version of Windows since 1992?

Ever since they managed more than 8.3.

Which is a "No".

Note: Windows 3.1/3.11/3.11 for workgroups didn't. *Only 95
and later did.

See!

So they'd not work with "ADPA-snipertrainer.ppt" nor
"ADPA.snipertrainer", neither being 8.3 compliant. *Poof!

Plus does this also
include all versions of Linux and Apache web servers too?

Yep. *Even on FAT file systems. *Which only an idiot would
run an apache webserver on top of.

YA insult attempt.

Since this is not the case,

What is not the case?

Your filename does NOT work for every version of Windows
since 1992 either. *2 dots work whereever long filenames
work.

Are you even sure of that? Better keep on checking.


then a revision to have only a single "."
within the entire filename is the only approach that will have 100%
success in resolving the dot-delimeter complaint that you had
contrived.

Dig harder. *You hole is not deep enough to cover the
incompetence yet.

YA insult attempt.

Let's keep in mind that this still is all a 'Red Herring' distraction,
where the only thing that the .ppt extension does is permit auto-
launch. It did not have any material impact of your technical
challenge to recover the document's contents. And yes, I'll remind
you again that you **failed** at that.

And as I've said, if you want to continue to make your baseless claim
that this data file has been irrecoverably lost, then please be
willing to back up your assertion with a bet, specifically one of
sufficient magnitude that it will easily cover my expenses to mail you
a copy: 20EUR will do, even though we both know that for you to even
acknowledge that you're wrong is really more a hit to your pride than
to your wallet.


What he missed was that the original file's name was not changed only
at the end to add the .PPT: *the original had a period in the middle,
and if two periods had been left intact in the filename, this could
have confused applications which have traditionally relied on periods
as a delimeter for file type identifiers.
Which application would that be, that didn't manage that, but
did manage longer files than 8.3?
You were already told it was Microsoft PowerPoint.

... that created the file.
BTW: Applications care nothing at all about file names.

BTW: you were the one who chose to bitch about it, so now you're
contradicting yourself.


And in how far would it be relevant to PowerPoint?
See above. *The lack of the 8.3 constraint was the free clue that it
was the version of PowerPoint that ran on Mac OS, not Windows.

So what's your 'every Windows since 1992' yammering about?

And why do you think everyone but *you* is unable to rename
files, when *you* are the one to deliver binary image files
as text/plain?
I never said that no one else could rename the file, so that's YA lie
from Wolfgang.

I didn't say you said so, I said you thought so.

Pedantic hair-splitting attempt? My, my, my!


But maybe that's a lie, too, and you don't think, you just
knee-jerk.

YA insult attempt.

Perhaps you should just try renaming the file yourself, rather than to
perpetuate your impotent whining and attempt to place blame on anyone
other than yourself.


Similarly, he claimed "one can deliberately choose a file format
singularily unsuited to archival and then harping about that as if
that was the average or usual case." * Sorry, but that's a malicious
misrepresentation
So you're claiming some proprietary, closed, ever changing, not
supposed for image storage or interchange Microsoft format is an
average and usual case *for* *intelligent* *people* *to* *use*
*for* *the* *archival* *of* *images*?
No.

Then what's your point with that PP file? *None?

No. The point is that the use case is generalizable: this is not
merely about image files.


The file format was what it was at its time of origin.

The white horse was white when you saw it. *Yes.

And can't be undone 20 years later. Deal with what you have, not what
you want.

Issues of how
to improve its archivability were simply not a consideration at that
time, and one simply cannot undo history to rectify that.

A normal person would recognize some day that some formats
are not archival quality and --- assuming some brains ---
transform the original into a more archival quality format.

Golly, it seems like it was just in your prior post that you were
making some claims about "experts", or something like that. Now,
we've moved the goal posts all the way to 'normal people'. In the
meantime, you've still not answered what either group was recommending
twenty years ago.


Just like a normal person would some day recognoize that
a mildew-afflicted shoe box was not the best way to store
negatives and then --- assuming some brains --- do something
constructive about it.

Yet in the meantime, Uncle Bob's old 35mm pictures are in a dark
closet someplace, or maybe the attic or worse yet, the basement. Does
it have low humidity? Minimal temperature swings? Who knows? The
storage facilities which are more likely to have active environmental
controls are those of professionals...and Uncle Bob isn't one of these
- - which was part of my point! Archiving with zero maintenance is
going to affect its salvageability, and such scenarios are going to be
more devastating to digital media than old school physical prints/
slides.



and an attempt to "Monday Morning Quarterback" a
decision that was made back in 1992:
I'm judging the decision on what was known to one skilled in the
field in 1992.
Unfortunately, that's a critical error on your part.
Quite frankly, I also have my doubts that even the 'experts' were this
far along back in 1992 regarding long term data retention issues,
particularly including the recommendation to use JPEG for long term
archivability. *Feel free to produce redundant published references
that discusses this issue that were disseminated in mainstream news
outlets back in this period (1992) which includes the JPEG
conclusion.

Again, you are not able to read what I wrote. *I've been
*very* careful not nominating JPEG as image storage format
back then.

Oh, on the contrary: I saw that you **initially** screamed
"JPEG!" ...

....but then ran away from that JPEG recommendation like a scalded cat
when you realized that the original dates from 20 years ago, and JPEG
wasn't yet mature enough to be considered a viable recommendation to
have made back in 1992. That's when you tried to change your
recommendation to BMP (Bitmap), but you've not determined if that was
even a supported format for the Mac OS platform (let alone the
application) back in that same period. As such, you haven't
demonstrated anything viable from the period yet.


*But you'd certainly claim criticising a quarterback
repeatedly scoring own goals was "Monday Morning Quarterback"ing,
after all, the game was on Sunday and how *could* he *possibly*
have known which side was the wrong one.
Sorry, but you've just revealed that English isn't your primary
language and you're misapplying the colloquialism.

It's *very* well known that English isn't my primary
language, but it's good to know I can fool someone for so
long without even trying. *Having said that: So criticising
a player for atrocious play is being a monday morning
quarterback, you haven't denied it-

You still got it wrong. The 'monday morning quarterback' is a slang
term used to describe the logical fallacy of trying to critique
history based on additional information that wasn't available at the
time of the original decision.


the format then chosen *was*
what was believed at the time to be a 'good' format.
Belived by whom?
The generic business office user.

I see. *So you'd ask J. Random Nigerian how to invest your
money, too?

YA insult attempt...and a pretty lame one at that.

If you were allowed into a general white collar business office today
in the USA, you'll find that most are still using Microsoft's Word/
Excel/Powerpoint formats as their default, with no particular "special
plans" for long term data archiving. So please go yell and scream at
them: I'm merely the messenger who is reporting "what is", which does
not constitute an endorsement on my part.


As I said above, I have my doubts
that even the 'experts' were already recommending JPEGS for all
graphics as early as 1992, and it is going to require published
references to convince me otherwise.

And again you have been misreading me.

No, that is you trying to avoid answering a key question: what
options were realistically (not pedantically) available for
consideration?


This happens so
often that you either don't read what I write, are unable to
concentrate long enough on the text or are not understanding
the language you write in. *Or maybe you do it on purpose.

And this is you trying to blame others.

The obvious conclusion is that you simply can not provide evidence
that 'experts' back in 1992 were recommending the JPEG format to
substantiate your claim ... oh, right: the claim of JPEG that you've
tried to run away from! Well then, at least substantiate what format
they were recommending in the professional literature, even if it was
that BMP format...if there actually is any discussion to be found.

Then the next step is that you'll need to demonstrate that that option
(whatever it was) was effectively available to the general use case in
the same time period.


But back to that format:
[...]
- were there multiple sources for writing and reading the format?
* Nope. *There's only one PP.
Except that what you're ignoring is that the software developers of
that period consistently provided full & transparent backwards
compatibility to their older file formats.

Or was that the impression of J Random Business User, who only
ever saw 3 programs?

Oh, please! You're overlooking other applications from that period
which I mentioned by brand name.


[...]
- What were they thinking of using in 20 years to get their
* images? *PowerPoint 3.0?
PowerPoint 3.0 worked just fine in being backwards-compatible to v2.0
So did PowerPoint 4.0

You have NOT gotten the question. *Again.

I'm substantiating my point. You should try it sometime. The
software manufacturer provided the backwards compatibility, satisfying
the archivability requirement (at least for awhile).


It wasn't until PowerPoint 98 (8.0) in 1998 that the backwards-
compatibility was broken.

And converters were made available.

And yet you still weren't able to recover said file.


It was a stupid idea evn in 1992, and at best you/they didn't know
any better. *Which made you/them singularly unsuited at the task.
Do feel free to show the "Save As JPEG" command in these Applications
to have provided any alternative approach.

Do feel free to READ WHAT I WRITE! *BMP != JPEG.

Yes, I know that JPEG isn't BMP.

I also know that your initial verbal abuse to use JPEG was abandoned
and you went to BMP when you realized that your JPEG recommendation
couldn't pragmatically have been employed 20 years ago.

And I also know that you never acknowledged your initial
recommendation (including all of the verbal abuse you hurled) as an
error.


*If you can't
export your PowerPoints to some simple format, then even J
Completely-Deranged Business User can't think that's good for
archival of photos.

Yes, it would be **nice** for us to **believe** that there was a
better file format alternative, but you have no proof for what options
were specifically available back in 1992 to use instead (and an
available "Save As" option from within that Application).


Additionally, it seems nothing was learned in the mean time,
because no corrective action was taken. *(Nope, that wasn't
your point. *Your point was that even if you do everything right
you need some effort to keep the file formats in good shape.)
Logic Fail: *an absence of discussion of corrective actions does not
constitute evidence that no corrective action ever took place.

So you either are throwing smoke grenades --- again --- or
you admit that your 'example' never was any problem.

On the contrary: the example is a problem because today's Powerpoint
doesn't support this old format. As such, an effort was required to
go find older versions of PP to test each one to see where/when the
backwards-compatibility was broken (supported).

You're trying to make this into a question of if I *personally* have
solved my data archiving problem. Sorry, but that's going to be an
anecdotal report regardless of if I was successful or not.

What's not anecdotal is that the challenges that this example involved
is why I pointed out that the challenge of data archiving is not
merely the data file, but also the Application and also the OS that
said Application needs to run under. As a minimum, it is a path with
three nodes on it, and a failure at any node results in a failure
overall.


A 'bad' one that
was known back in that day would have been "PFS:First Choice".
"Harvard Graphics" has also turned out to have been a bad one too, but
I don't know offhand if it was already obviously in decline by 1992.
The obvious format would have been BMP, version 3. *Simple,
robust, easy to implement a reader. *The only drawback is that
they're relatively large, compared to lossy compressed formats.
But was BMP available on the Mac back in 1992?

Yes. *It's a file format. *A trivial simple one.

Since you've not produced a 'salvage' from this case study, the
evidence that supports characterizing it as "trivial" is absent.



And as critically, as a "Save As" option within PowerPoint?

If no, PP was not fit for archival, since you couldn't get
your photos back out.

That's an "if", not a definitive response.


JPEG was released *as* *a* *standard* in 1992.
Which meant that it was not adequately mature

It was. *Though it wasn't common enough.

Which meant that "experts" would not have yet been recommending JPEG
for archiving...just as how you've backed away from that yourself.


- - or had adequate
assurances that it would still be around in 20+ years - -

What part of "released *as* *a* *standard*" didn't you grasp?
The fact that I didn't write that the complete process how to
create and how to interpret a JPEG file was described in
painstaking detail, enabling any programmer to create his own
implementation from scratch --- even in 20+ years?

Unfortunately, you keep on trying to equate "pedantic" to "pragmatic",
and the question isn't if something is pedantically _possible_, it is
if it is pragmatically _probable_.

I'm not disputing that there can be _a_ path through the woods to a
successful archive: my point is that there's many intersections
(decision point nodes) along that path and a wrong turn at any of them
results in failure. For example, a process that involves merely three
(3) decision point nodes and with a 80% probability of selecting the
correct one at each decision results in a process that only is
successful ~50% (pedantic: 51.2%) of the time.

So it doesn't matter if the files were pedantically saved in a file
format that was a published standard back in 1992, if that standard is
pragmatically dead and unsupported in mainstream applications in
2012: the UI "double-click" comes up with the PC saying "???", and
the risk is that the operator simply shrugs, perhaps assumes that the
file was corrupted and throws the disk into trash can: that data is
now lost forever.

As I said many moons ago, someone who encounters a nominally
unreadable set of files in the Estate of Uncle Bob isn't guaranteed to
know exactly what they are, what to do with them, nor even recognize
them as something of value to be retained ... so these archived files
will more than likely get thrown out.


to have been
a serious consideration for a decision that was made back in 1992.

Now ponder why I said BMP.

It *still* works, ...
Yes, but that's a retrospective view:

Simple, easy to implement standards tend to have that feature.

you've picked the winner after
it has survived for 20 years. *That's useless advice unless you also
have a time machine in your back pocket.

Name one open, free standard of 1992 or earlier that can't be
read today.

Sorry, but this is all just a "gotcha!" game attempt. The pragmatic
reality is that every feature within an application takes money to
support & maintain, so there is a constant financial incentive to drop
support of 'dead' (atrophied) features. What you've failed to do is
to show us that **every** file format standard that existed in 1992 is
still actively supported in mainstream products.

For example, show us all just how well the TWAIN standard is working
today in Adobe Photoshop. Yes, I know that you'll squeal like a pig
in that this isn't a file format, but it is an OPEN STANDARD, which is
all that you called for.

The facts of the matter are that TWAIN is no longer part of the
standard Photoshop install. Sure, one can go to their website to
download a driver, but it isn't always going to work, as what we find
is that the standard needs to have been updated for changes in
hardware & OS architecture, such as to 64 bit, and these 64-bit
systems were not written to be backwards-compatible to old 32-bit
based plug-ins; see:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/phot...photoshop-cs6/

As can be seen above, the steady & inevitable death of TWAIN is proof
that not all open standards live on forever...at least from a
pragmatic "operator" perspective.

But do feel free to prove me wrong by writing & distributing for free
a 64-bit TWAIN driver that's compatible with the current versions of
Photoshop running under the recent Mac OSs and which supports every
digital scanner that's been sold by EPSON, CANON and NIKON since the
inception of USB. I'll even pay you 30EUR for it :-)


So why not JPEG in 1992? *Because the format was too new and
programs using it probably not widely available back then.
And I don't really recall BMP being supported back then by Macs, even
within Microsoft products. *As such, your recommendation doesn't
appear to be one that would have been an available choice either.

So into what format could PP on Mac export photos and text?

Sorry, but you should have thought of that before criticizing a
decision made 20 years ago.


The underlying point here is pretty simple: it isn't trivially easy
to predict the future, particularly in technology.
It's trivially easy to see when a format is *certainly*
not suitable as archival format. *Even if the year was 1992.
PowerPoint is a prime example. *Red flags everywhere.
Except that it only became evident as a problem six (6) years later,
when Microsoft dropped their backwards-compatibility to their earlier
file format without any particularly overt notification to their
customers.

It's like speeding with no seatbelt and no airbag. *It'll get
you, even if it takes a couple years. *Anyone with eyes can
see that.

Except that even with seatbelts and airbags today, people still die.
All you've done is change the risks; they've not been eliminated.



Had one asked me back
in ~1980 the future direction of computer memory, I very well may have
predicted the bubble memory that Texas Instrument was using on their
"Silent 700" terminals. *Whoops.
And what does bubble memory (or any other physical storage format
that can store any sort of file formats) have to do with a file
format's suitability for archival?
It merely serves as YA example for how trying to predict the future
isn't an 'exact science'.

No, it's an example how *YOU* have been wrong about the future.
Not about people in general or 'exact science'.

YA insult attempt.

For an example of the general use case, simply go walk through a
contemporary business office. The reality is that the vast majority
uses Microsoft products (including Powerpoint) and after a document's
creation/use, there's no effort made 99.99% of the time to save it
into a different format to be an "Archival" record for posterity: to
do so costs time & money. At best, you'll find that some may have
been PDF'ed, but the motivation was not archiving: it typically is
for some other business-centric motivation, such as to create a file
small enough for transmission by email.


The uncertainty of the future is what has
prevented archiving from being a trivial & easy activity.

Ah ... no.

Sorry, but the facts of the matter are that everyone has incurred data
loss somewhere, even you, through a variety of mechanisms.


As I said, if you want to continue to claim that I'm an idiot and that
this data file has been irrecoverably lost, then please be willing to
back up your assertion with a bet, specifically one of sufficient
magnitude that it will easily cover the expenses of mailing you a
hardcopy.


-hh