On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:04:13 +0200 Antoine wrote:
> > So the conclusion: for typical office workers, we can forget PS format. > > > > Now welcome for suggestions. > > I think the key to this whole story is the second to last line above. > "for typical office workers" says it all. I think you are quite right to > say you can forget PS format. You could probably stick with pdf if you > only need the documents for 2-5 years. PDF is very much industry > standard for archiving, and isn't going away soon. > I would *definitely* think about keeping documents (if you are going to > go to the trouble of archiving and all that) in text format, probably > xml like odt or even m$ xml, because if the data are valuable then > finding something to read it in 50 years will probably be difficult. The > EU is looking like it will go that way just like Massachusetts - no > reason why you shouldn't either. You will ALWAYS be able to find or > create a tool to get decently printed and onscreen presentation from > well marked up plaintext. Don't forget that some documents that a "typical office worker" wants to archive may not be available as text. They may be scanned or fax documents. Our scanner /printer at the office outputs in .pdf or .tiff. I could build a fax server to receive documents and save them in .tiff or pdf. Suddenly it makes sense to save a whiole lot of stuff as pdf. As you say, it isn't going away soon! Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
