Re: obscure arcane knowledge

From: Jon Danforth <jdanforth@sc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: obscure arcane knowledge
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 17:31:29 -0500

> One of the things _I_ worry about is the long-term support of file
> formats. Once TIFF, PSD, and PDD go by the wayside and it's
> replaced by God-knows-what, what will we do with all of our
> carefully archived backups?!

I don't know about proprietary formats, but the file formats for TIFF,
PNG, JPEG, etc. are public knowledge. You can always write your
program to convert to a new format, as an ultimate solution.

Also, there are a lot of programs that can handle these formats whose
source codes are freely distributed. ImageMagick for example can
convert many formats to primitive bitmap files (among many other
options), which you should be able to convert to a new format.

So, watch out for proprietary formats. I wouldn't use anything but
those with open specifications.

--
Ryuji Suzuki
"All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie." (Bob Dylan 2000)