[Coco] [Color Computer] RE: DjVu misconceptions

[John R. Hogerhuis]

To give this discussion some perspective (not responding to anyone
directly, really):

We're just talking about data formats here. Data can be converted from
one format to another with little human intervention -- conversion
utilities and scripts. That's what computers do! The tools exist to do
the conversions to/from either format and they are available TODAY for
both formats. 

The idea that "oh I might have to keep an old PC around to do the
conversion if it ever becomes necessary" is just silly, especially for a
vintage computing list.

If nothing else, emulators future-proof data. I'm not saying data is
always in an easily accessible format. Sometimes you have to put in some
work to do conversions. But the sky is not falling no matter which of
these formats is used (or the no-format idea, a loose set of HTML pages
incorporating the images). I doubt it would be too hard to set up a
conversion environment in a QEMU session running Linux.


As to the raw size of the data and keeping it on your hard drive (which
I intend to do) people frequently get 80, or 100, 200Gig drives these
days. The situation on the storage front is only going to get better and
better.


If there were any DRM involved, I would see the situation very
differently. But in the end we are talking about two publicly available
standards which both have free-software reference implementations. As to
patent encumberance, don't lose any sleep. If you have a viewer that
works NOW and converters that work NOW, the patent police are not going
to come to your house and take them away. You'll be able to run them on
PCs for a long time, and in emulators after that.

-- John.