On Wed, Oct 07, 2009 at 12:31:57AM -0400, Doug Franklin scripsit: > Graydon wrote: >> Well, coming up on 4 decades, we have roff, and all its various -- >> nroff, troff, groff -- descendants. The examples in the original Bell >> Labs papers work with current shipping open source groff. > > OK, that's one. ... out of how many?
I mention it merely to raise the counter-example to impossibility. > And let's not forget, how'd you store that *roff input file? Paper > tape? Punch cards? 14" open-air disk packs? 9-track tape in any of > three or four different densities? 8" floppy disks in any of a dozen > or more formats? 5.25" floppies in even more formats? 1.44" > floppies in a handful of formats? Any of fifty or more varieties of > "consumer" tape products? ... Copy all your digital files forward; this is the way, the truth, and the life with digital files. > For paper, you need the paper. For any digital storage medium, you > need an entire, *operational* system including peripherals and > software. For paper, you need paper, reasonably humidity, dark, lack of ants, termites, wasps, weevils, and silverfish, and the blessed absence of fungus. For truly long-term, you need the blessed absence of oxygen and atmospheric sulfates. It's not an easy problem; all things come in time to die. -- Graydon -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
