HTML "transition" (was Re: [ih] spam...)

[Joe Touch]

Lloyd Wood wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Joe Touch wrote:
> 
>>I'm not a big MS OS fan, but MS-Word disproves this.
>>
>>I can open a document written in May 1986 with Office XP (just did it to
>>verify it works). That's 17 years, and I don't see that changing in the
>>next 5.
>>
>>
>>>Experience says that no one
>>>will have tools that will read .doc from now with anything like
>>>original fidelity.
>>
>>With a little slack (17 isn't 20, but it's close), point disproven
>>above. FWIW, this includes multiple fonts and font sizes, and embedded
>>figures.
> 
> 
> Joe,
> 
> You've proven nothing. You've merely shown that a given task of
> unknown complexity may be possible, and described this with your usual
> absolute unshaken certainty.

He said "no one". Being "one", having read an original .doc 17 years 
later, including figures, with original fidelity intact, I've proven 
exactly what was needed to refute his claim. I never said every document 
would do this; I do have others, however- a few 16 year-old ones, and 
more as they get younger - all of which work fine. _I_ clearly have 
tools (Office XP) to extract files with original fidelity intact. _Your_ 
mileage may vary...

> Get back to us when you've tried recovering a document that used e.g.
> Master Document and fast save, or live embedded OLE. Or even an
> autogenerated list of contents and tables. Or footnotes.

There are plenty of ways to stress systems; even ASCII email has stress 
points that have failed over the years, and the bleeding edge of HTML 
fails regularly. MS has discouraged fast saves (at least when asked) 
since they were introduced, and a few hint books keep reminding us.

> I suspect the longevity of a document's readability is inversely
> proportional to the number of features involved in creating it, not
> the time between writing and reading it. Complexity is the killer.

On that we both agree.

Joe