5 ms·

That "some" proprietary formats from the 80's and 90's are still readable is already causing real problems: because not all are. So text, possibly with Markdo

That "some" proprietary formats from the 80's and 90's are still readable is already causing real problems: because not *all* are. So text, possibly with Markdown or similar hints regarding emphasis and structure, is still vastly better than any alternative I can think of.

c0balt 5y ago
Additionally the option to (relatively) easily transform markdown or richtext to another format is a great when you want to try a new tool and/or format.
- eddieroger 5y ago
  That's the real secret, I think, keeping content up to date. Text isn't the only medium that can be treated that way, too. My family converted lots of analog audio and video tapes to DVD some years ago, and I immediately turned around and ripped them to digital, lossless types and stored them on a few hard drives and eventually a cloud backup. Will FLAC and MP4 last forever? Nope, probably not, but if I check in on these files every few years, update the players that I've saved (VLC), and periodically convert them to newer formats, I feel comfortable that my grandchildren will be able to hear their great-great-grandparents' road trip to California, or see video of my bar mitzvah on whatever screen they're using years from now.
  - nayuki 5y ago
    Nitpick - DVD is digital. When you said "digital", you probably meant "computer file based" format, as opposed to a physical disc format. Similar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682996
sleepycatgirl 5y ago
Yup. Or .org for that matter,
dhosek 5y ago
I bumped into this recently with a couple Kodak PhotoCDs I uncovered last month. Trying to get the pictures out of the PCD files is turning out to be more challenging than I expected.
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  Is ImageMagick not doing the job? It's been a while, but Photoshop used to be pretty adept at this as well.
  - dhosek 5y ago
    I haven't checked ImageMagick to see if it supports PCD, I'll have to see if I can do it in my wife's PhotoShop license.
    - dhosek 5y ago
      And ImageMagick will only do the lowest resolution images from the files.
- js2 5y ago
  I converted mine years ago using iPhoto but according to Wikipedia, there are several programs that can do the conversion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_CD#Converting_Photo_CD_images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_CD#Converting_Photo_CD_i...
  - dhosek 5y ago
    iPhoto no longer exists and the replacement, Photos doesn't support it. A free command-line tool I found doesn't run any without signing and I need to find the dependent library for JPEG handling to use it. Other apps are paid.
    - dhosek 5y ago
      And an online service that claims to do it only extracts the lowest resolution scan from the file.

That "some" proprietary formats from the 80's and 90's are still readable is already causing real problems: because not *all* are. So text, possibly with Markdo

c0balt 5y ago

Additionally the option to (relatively) easily transform markdown or richtext to another format is a great when you want to try a new tool and/or format.

eddieroger 5y ago
That's the real secret, I think, keeping content up to date. Text isn't the only medium that can be treated that way, too. My family converted lots of analog audio and video tapes to DVD some years ago, and I immediately turned around and ripped them to digital, lossless types and stored them on a few hard drives and eventually a cloud backup. Will FLAC and MP4 last forever? Nope, probably not, but if I check in on these files every few years, update the players that I've saved (VLC), and periodically convert them to newer formats, I feel comfortable that my grandchildren will be able to hear their great-great-grandparents' road trip to California, or see video of my bar mitzvah on whatever screen they're using years from now.
- nayuki 5y ago
  Nitpick - DVD is digital. When you said "digital", you probably meant "computer file based" format, as opposed to a physical disc format. Similar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28682996

sleepycatgirl 5y ago

Yup. Or .org for that matter,

dhosek 5y ago

I bumped into this recently with a couple Kodak PhotoCDs I uncovered last month. Trying to get the pictures out of the PCD files is turning out to be more challenging than I expected.

deltarholamda 5y ago
Is ImageMagick not doing the job? It's been a while, but Photoshop used to be pretty adept at this as well.
- dhosek 5y ago
  I haven't checked ImageMagick to see if it supports PCD, I'll have to see if I can do it in my wife's PhotoShop license.
  - dhosek 5y ago
    And ImageMagick will only do the lowest resolution images from the files.
js2 5y ago
I converted mine years ago using iPhoto but according to Wikipedia, there are several programs that can do the conversion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_CD#Converting_Photo_CD_images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_CD#Converting_Photo_CD_i...
- dhosek 5y ago
  iPhoto no longer exists and the replacement, Photos doesn't support it. A free command-line tool I found doesn't run any without signing and I need to find the dependent library for JPEG handling to use it. Other apps are paid.
  - dhosek 5y ago
    And an online service that claims to do it only extracts the lowest resolution scan from the file.