OT & Overlong: The Future of Orphaned Files...
OT & Overlong: The Future of Orphaned Files...
- Subject: OT & Overlong: The Future of Orphaned Files...
- From: Peter Bunn <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 13:48:01 -0500
OT & Overlong: The Future of Orphaned Files...
(Once again, my apologies for being off-topic. Referrals to a more
appropriate forum/venue are welcome.)
This is motivated by the apparent acknowledgment by Apple that Classic
emulation will not likely be supported in the transition to an Intel
based system. It is also - in part - motivated by the assumption that
'Rosetta' (or Transitive Corporation's 'Quick Transit') may in fact be
technically capable of addressing this concern... if there is enough
incentive.
Anyone who has spent say, three to five years using most any OS platform
has probably confronted the reality that some application or other (that
first created some file or other) is no longer supported by a newer OS.
Sage (or lucky) individuals can boot into (or emulate) older systems when
necessary in order to view, edit or export those files. But I would
wager that _a lot_ of folks don't have that ready ability.
Brief cases in point... and more or less at random:
1) A friend working as a graphics specialist at a midwest university was
unable to find a copy of MacDraw Pro to open a file that a professor in
her department had created years ago. As luck would have it, I had
inherited a copy of Canvas 3 that actually had a usable translator, and
was able to export it as an image... though not in original format. If I
had been on an Xtel box, the file would have been - for all intents and
purposes - history... because not even Canvas 3 could run there.
2) I'm still using a pre-X OS, though I've had a pretty good look-around
on X. At least 5 years of my e-mail resides in Claris Emailer DB's.
Surely no one but me could give a good goddamn, but I'm loathe to part
company with them forever. Even though I have the skill to script a text
archive solution of sorts, obviously many other people in a similar
dilemma simply _don't_.
3) Recently, on another scripting forum, someone asked for a scripted
method to translate ClarisWorks 4.4 files to AW 6.9. I replied that CW
4.4 would probably still run in Classic and that the files were likely
still accessible and perhaps a GUI copy/paste remedy could be found.
There were no other solutions offered.
If Apple will not / chooses not to support any sort of 'Classic'
emulation, I can only hope that some third-party alternative will be
offered. It is anathema to me to think that the door is just being
closed... that, in effect, many of these files will simply no longer be
easily viewable - by the 'owning individual', or archivists or historians
- without significant difficulty... made that much more difficult by
Apple's decision(s) to leave dual booting capability behind.
OS 9 may be dead for developer futures... and that intent is
understood... as is the move to Intel... but Jeez, Marie, what about the
rest of us poor slobs?
Peter Bunn
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