[Taxacom] Proposed ICZN amendments on electronic publishing

[Richard Pyle]

> >...  If I had to guess, I suspect that PDF file resoution  software 
> >will be with us for a long time.
> 
> Agree.  But that does not make the practice, even between 
> consenting adults, excusable.

Yes -- that was, in fact, my point (more or less).

> This issue is not whether it is binary or not but how much 
> and how complex is the technology required to get it from the 
> stored form to the human form, which in this case is the 
> alphanumerpunctobet.  This is something we can probably keep 
> in our sights with textual information, but when it comes to 
> digital images and other multimedia there is no equivalent of 
> ASCII and we are already in *deep* trouble.

BMP comes pretty close to ASCII for images; perhaps followed by TIFF.  Of
course, we all like to use JPEG; but like PDF, that requires an extra layer
or interpretation to get it rendered properly.

> > when we move beyond binary computers, there is no doubt in my mind 
> > that there will be ample opportunity to translate the 
> binary-encoded 
> > information into whatever the next fundamental computer information 
> > system is.
> 
> You are quite right... sort of...  with any new technology 
> there will be a mechanism to migrate from the existing to the 
> new - to do
> otherwise would be a suicidal business decision.   The problem is,
> because it is a business model, they will offer the the 
> minimum migration they can get away with.  Thus your solution 
> will only work if you migrate (and test) *everything* - every 
> time.  The reality is (or has been) that in every migration 
> process some things get overlooked and forgotten surviving in 
> the old format until one fine day, 'sorry this format is no 
> longer supported'.  There is a strong analogy in the 
> evolutionary process here that will probably not be lost on 
> Taxacom.  And the more taxonomy we do the more we will have 
> to migrate and test each time.

Not sure I agree -- especially at the ASCII/UTF/XML/BMP level of
abstraction.

> This is happening with us now and I assume it is happening everywhere
> - make a migration to a new system, test a few random (or 
> targetted) instances and assume (and hope) the rest are going 
> to be ok.  

Methinks you are probably talking about migrating platforms, programming
languages, DBMS, complex & robust apps, etc., etc. -- to which everything
you said in the preceeding paragraph applies. If all you're doing is
migrating UTF-8 in XML, then you'll probably be OK.

> With millions of items we can not do otherwise, 
> and if something did not go right it may be years before we 
> stumble on the records in question.
> And as the asset grows, with every iteration the possible QA 
> percentage of the entire data set gets less and less.

Still a whole lot easier/better/more reliable than migrating printed
documents from, say, Cyrillic to English -- which is the paper-based
equivalent to what you are describing.

> > "...let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which 
> fence them 
> > from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste 
> of time, 
> > but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them 
> beyond the 
> > reach of accident."
> 
> This is a very valid sentiment to quote and we use this 
> strategic principle ourselves.  But it has to be asked, how 
> valuable will be a million copies of something that can not be read?

And this is exactly thr trade-off that is exercising us at the moment.  Oh,
wait....

> And this is exactly the trade off that is exercising us at the moment.

Hmmmmm....it almost seems as though my point, and your point are, in fact,
the same point?

Aloha,
Rich