Saturday, December 16, 2006
Sic transit data mundi
There's a 1986 book in my personal library called File Formats for Popular PC Software: A Programmer's Reference, by Jeff Walden. The chapter titles list the formats covered:
- Lotus 1-2-3
- Ability
- dBase II and dBase III
- Data Interchange Format (DIF)
- Multimate Professional Word Processor
- Microsoft Multiplan and the SYLK File Format
- IBM Plans+
- SuperCalc 3 and Super Data Interchange Format
- VisiCalc
- WordStar
- WordStar 2000
These were leading formats of there time, and none of them are in active use today. Fortunately, there are still converters available for most or all of them; but the list serves as a reminder that in twenty years all your documents can become obsolete.
I'm not throwing the book away. You never know when someone will produce a cache of old files that need to be recovered, and the existing converters may or may not be bug-free and adequate.
# posted by Gary McGath @ 6:56 AM 
