We "longtimers" have discussed the legacy file thing a number of times. I encountered one today with a pdf, of all things. Problem now solved, but relaying some info in case someone else runs into it.
I have long thought that pdf's should be one solution. Almost anything can be saved in that format now, if one has Acrobat.
HOWEVER, I opened a pdf created long ago - possibly with Acrobat 6 Standard or earlier.
(Wanted a copy of an article I wrote & was published 1995)
The file opened, but when it closed, it completely disappeared. Acrobat Pro 8 apparently was very unhappy, and destroyed it! Nowhere to be found.
Happily I had files on my Pismo that I was able to use & reconstruct (nearly) everything. Had to edit the original to make sure a bunch of Zapf Dingbats displayed correctly (in MacWrite Pro, OS9), save to file with fonts embedded, transfer the postscript file to my desktop machine, then use Acrobat 8/Distiller to create the pdf. Thankfully it came out OK eventually, but consumed a whole morning of figuring out work-arounds, trial & error.

FWIW

When archiving a document or project, it is sometimes necessary to archive the OS and hardware as well. All those punch cards are mostly pocket note cards now. Those reels of magnetic tape are just props for old TV shows. Steve took away our floppy disk drives. Zip drives have the "click of death". SCSI disks are paperweights.

Longevity may be prolonged by refreshing documents as Mary Jo had to do.

Even JPEG files may have problems. "Cracking Grandpa's JPEGs in the year 2424" can only be found on the WayBack machine now: http://web.archive.org/web/200...sh/printer_660.shtml

Archival (or not) paper prints may still be better than digital format over extended time. Proceed accordingly with your precious data and documents.

As time progresses and as software versions make older file versions obsolete or corrupts them, we'll have to keep dealing with similar issues. There are a few things that I do, that may be helpful for anyone that has had to deal with an experience as Mary Jo did.

If the file is "really" important for me to retain and to be able to access in the future, I try to re-save it in as many formats as possible - particularly as text files (if the images aren't all that important). For images, I will take screen shots and save them in a variety of formats. Obviously, we can't do this for every file we have, but just for the really important ones.

I also have gotten into the habit of attempting to retain a bootable version of an older OS - for rare instances. I currently have a bootable version of Panther on an external hard drive. I even have an old G4 that will read Zip disks, as well as floppies (don't toss the old computers if they still work).

It takes a little planning for the future, and some extra work - but, if the file is important for the future, I feel that it's worth the effort.

It's a good idea to think about what you've got, want you want to keep, and then how to keep it.

Regarding text files, simpler is probably better. ASCII files (a type of encoding) should be around for a long time. Many word processors, and even some editors, encode text in proprietary formats so that it's not very decodeable.

Regarding images, TIF files are very good to use. Once again, the more encoding involved, the less archival the file format. JPEG's, BMP's, GIF's immediately destroy color, and shouldn't be at all. There is no archival video file format (that you can afford).

Audio files are archival if encoded losslessly, like WAV, AIFF, AU or raw header-less PCM. Therefore, don't store music in MP3 formats, iPod formats, AAC, or WMA. I wouldn't even use Apple or WMA Lossless. Don't use Dolby anti-noise encoding either, or RIAA curves.

Media have limited lifetimes, with many CD/DVD's being VERY short; hard drives about 5 years; audio and video tape 7 years; film maybe 20 years; and paper about 100 years.

Other media has a "rock solid" lifespan.


The digital age is the age of lost information.

From Jim -

quote:

When archiving a document or project, it is sometimes necessary to archive the OS and hardware as well.

My (almost) 10 year old Pismo IS my archive machine! I'd have really been up a tree with this issue without it, as the updated apps on my other 8-year old computer were creating the problems.

Mike & Chuck - your comments are extremely helpful. I thought pdf was a graphic format that should last "forever," but apparently not.

I could have looked up the published version of the document in question & reconstructed it (read: copy & do it all over), but it had quite a few charts, music graphics, etc. that I hoped to save.

Chuck's comment: The digital age is the age of lost information.
TRUE. Think about the "lost" working versions of various arts. Writers' doodles, composers manuscripts, etc. How will students & scholars be able to dig a bit deeper into the mentality of these people if they worked from computers & deleted the rejected material. - And we haven't even begun to consider the effect on historical documentation.

Thank goodness for all those people digitizing stuff, but what about the documentation of what's going on now if it's done on a computer? Scary.
This is not a new issue, but it will never really "go away" - just get more complicated as time goes on.

Chuck - Just thought of something:

Preview has a "Save as" option of JPEG-2000. I looked it up, and supposedly it's a lossless version of JPEG. However I tried creating a file of a book cover for my web site using this format, and it wasn't recognized (by Dreamweaver, by the web, by?). I had to redo the file as a normal JPEG for it to display.

Mary Jo,

Apparently, web browser manufacturers haven't caught up with JPEG 2000. I found this info that will explain it in more detail, as well as its use for other applications. http://www.jpeg.org/apps/index.html

Oh boy, Mike! Thanks a bunch, but the site is too technical for me. I think I found the little bit of info I mentioned on Wikipedia or somewhere basic.