Creating the safest electronic family album with which progr

[Freddo]

Maybe someone here would know or maybe suggest where I can ask this
question.

Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?

Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,

Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big

So, MS Word or some other program?
Thanks

[Charani]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:30:35 +1000, Freddo wrote:

Maybe someone here would know or maybe suggest where I can ask this
question.

Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?

Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,

Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big

So, MS Word or some other program?

The photos could be easily printed on ordinary paper, but they don't
always reproduce very well.

The technology that we use today, may not be available to future
generations.

Why not get your own domain name and upload everything to your own web
site?? You can print off hard copies if you wish, or direct relatives
to the site. You can always leave (bequesth/will) the maintenance of
the site to future generations to ensure that it continues and the
technological advances should carry your site with them if you've
decent hosting. It needn't be expensive either.

I've already started compiling my family history for my own site.
Nothing's up yet though.

[cecilia]

"Freddo" wrote:

[...]Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?
Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,
Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big
So, MS Word or some other program?

HTML or PDF

[cecilia]

Charani wrote:

[...] You can always leave (bequesth/will) the maintenance of
the site to future generations to ensure that it continues [...]

I'm in agreement with much of what Charani wrote, but leaving
maintenance of a site is not necessarily easy.

I'm having enough trouble considering to whom to leave the
responsibility for communication with PRONI about some scrappy pieces
of paper deposited on indefinite loan, should PRONI later decide they
don't want them after all.

[Lesley Walker]

There's a short answer and a long answer. Here's the long answer
according to me:

Try to avoid using proprietary formats, ie those where you have to pay
for a commercial product in order to even load the file and see what's
in it. Go for "open source" formats wherever possible. MS Word might
seem like a safe bet right now, and it probably will be around for a
decade or two, but you never know, MS might be first against the wall
when the revolution comes, or they may go bust when global warming
really hits and nobody can afford computers any more.

Seriously, if you're thinking really long-term, you need to bear in
mind that nobody can predict what the future might hold in terms of
data storage formats, and I tend to think that a two-pronged approach
might be best if you truly want to future-proof your data.

The first "prong" is to commit yourself and whoever might follow on
from you to maintaining the data in an accessible format, which means
upgrading software as circumstances change, converting databases and
graphic formats as necessary so that they will still be readable (and
update-able) when the next generation of software becomes obsolete.
This approach also requires offsite backups, of the data AND the
software that can read it, so that if your house burns down, or is
bombed in WW3, you can still get the information back again.

Taking this to the extreme, you should also keep copies of technical
information on the nitty-gritty details of the data formats used - so
that when the strategy of continually refreshing the software fails,
and all that's left is a bunch of files that can only read by an
obsolete program that only runs on obsolete computers that nobody can
find any more, somebody can pay an expert to use that information and
create new software that can read the files (which is why you should go
for open formats). That's if they can read the media which leads to
another point...

CDs and DVDs will only last a few years and need to be copied to keep
the data reliable. Zip drives are fairly reliable but low-capacity by
today's standards, expensive and going out of fashion. Backups on a
hard drive (which you update and then send away) might be reliable for
a time but in ten years or so, even if you use the latest technology
today, may not be able to be used in a new machine.

The second "prong", Charani has already alluded to, and that is that a
paper copy is the ultimate backup. So make sure you have high-quality
printouts of your data kept in a safe place, or preferably multiple
places, so that when some unexpected disaster hits there is a chance
that at least one set of copies will survive. Make sure it's printed in
a clear font on acid-free paper, and stored in acid-free containers in
a dry environment, away from silverfish and other creepy-crawlies that
eat paper. For photos, for ultimate future-proofing, consider getting
photographic quality printouts made commercially, and specify.

I know, I'm taking a rather extreme view of the issue, and I'm
sidestepping the details of the original questions, but this is the
kind of thinking that I'm used to putting forward in a business context
for "everyday" data archiving and disaster recovery planning.

Obviously the response (from most people, at a hobby level) will be
"that's too hard", and of course it is. You just have to figure out
what level of future-proofing and recovery capability you can afford
(in terms of money and time), and what level of risk you are prepared
(constrained) to accept. It's the same balancing act whether it's a
business, a hobby or a national heritage, just the balancing point will
vary.

Sorry if I've confused or depressed you, Freddo, and anyone else with
the same question.

The short answer is "some other program".

Somebody mentioned HTML, and that's one of the most open text formats
in existence, but you also have have to figure out what graphics format
to use, and in that I'm not an expert. JPG is good for accessibility,
but it's a lossy format (ie you lose some of the picture information
when you convert to it). GIF is not lossy, but it's not an open format
either, and is becoming less accessible as more program developers
decide it's not worth paying the licence fees. Personally I'm going
with JPG at 80% quality for the time being, but that's for documents
which I'm scanning at 300dpi (or 200 when I forget to change the
default setting). I haven't settled on a standard for pictures, maybe
somebody else can make a suggestion.

Hope this helps, or at least doesn't hinder too much!

Lesley W.

[Lesley Walker]

Charani wrote:

Why not get your own domain name and upload everything to your own web
site?? You can print off hard copies if you wish, or direct relatives
to the site. You can always leave (bequesth/will) the maintenance of
the site to future generations to ensure that it continues and the
technological advances should carry your site with them if you've
decent hosting. It needn't be expensive either.

I like this idea - one could set up a small trust fund, perhaps, to
ensure continued financial support for it. Might look into that
possibility myself, one day.

Lesley W.

[Lesley Robertson]

"Lesley Walker" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

Seriously, if you're thinking really long-term, you need to bear in
mind that nobody can predict what the future might hold in terms of
data storage formats,

True. Without moving from my desk, I can see 4 sorts of disc, not one of
which can be read with the drives on my current office pc. Add to that the
CD which has just refused to be read (fortunately the backup performed for
copying). Also within view is a stack of glass negatives from the 19th
century, easily "read" using a photo scanner. Those glass negatives (some of
which go back to the 1880s) have survived neglect and mistreatment (in the
70s and 80s nobody here was interested in the history of the lab); they were
made damp when the asbestos removal people generated a mist to settle dust,
and many were just left loose on the floor in the attic - and they're all
still useable.
One of the things I do is care for a scientific archive and we have just had
a set of 19th century lab journals copied so that we can work with them
without damaging the originals. Copies are made to archival b/w film for
storage, and the film is scanned to DVD for convenience of working (this is
the procedure laid down by the Dutch National Library for all digitization
as the film is known to be good for at least 100 years).

What I'm saying it that the lowest level of technology if the best one if
you want to be sure of long term data survival. Hard copy onto good quality
paper, and also onto b/w film (although it's worth being careful with choice
of film - also in my archive is a couple of rolls of nitrocellulose film -
we can see that they contain images, but we're not opening the dessicator
they're in to see what they are!)..
Lesley Robertson

[Brian]

Avoid Family History Programs for all except the basic data. Most export
data in GEDCOM format which tends to omit any info it doesn't understand.
The error file when I recently transferred some data was horrendous.

Use well proven standard Office type programs where ever possible as there
should always be someway of reading these on a computer. After all, all
government records are moving to electronic versions and record offices of
the future will need to be able to read them.
Also most of this type of programs read previous versions. If you think the
program might not exist in the future, save the version (such as the Adobe
reader for pdf files) with your data

Brian


"Lesley Walker" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

There's a short answer and a long answer. Here's the long answer
according to me:

Try to avoid using proprietary formats, ie those where you have to pay
for a commercial product in order to even load the file and see what's
in it. Go for "open source" formats wherever possible. MS Word might
seem like a safe bet right now, and it probably will be around for a
decade or two, but you never know, MS might be first against the wall
when the revolution comes, or they may go bust when global warming
really hits and nobody can afford computers any more.

Seriously, if you're thinking really long-term, you need to bear in
mind that nobody can predict what the future might hold in terms of
data storage formats, and I tend to think that a two-pronged approach
might be best if you truly want to future-proof your data.

The first "prong" is to commit yourself and whoever might follow on
from you to maintaining the data in an accessible format, which means
upgrading software as circumstances change, converting databases and
graphic formats as necessary so that they will still be readable (and
update-able) when the next generation of software becomes obsolete.
This approach also requires offsite backups, of the data AND the
software that can read it, so that if your house burns down, or is
bombed in WW3, you can still get the information back again.

Taking this to the extreme, you should also keep copies of technical
information on the nitty-gritty details of the data formats used - so
that when the strategy of continually refreshing the software fails,
and all that's left is a bunch of files that can only read by an
obsolete program that only runs on obsolete computers that nobody can
find any more, somebody can pay an expert to use that information and
create new software that can read the files (which is why you should go
for open formats). That's if they can read the media which leads to
another point...

CDs and DVDs will only last a few years and need to be copied to keep
the data reliable. Zip drives are fairly reliable but low-capacity by
today's standards, expensive and going out of fashion. Backups on a
hard drive (which you update and then send away) might be reliable for
a time but in ten years or so, even if you use the latest technology
today, may not be able to be used in a new machine.

The second "prong", Charani has already alluded to, and that is that a
paper copy is the ultimate backup. So make sure you have high-quality
printouts of your data kept in a safe place, or preferably multiple
places, so that when some unexpected disaster hits there is a chance
that at least one set of copies will survive. Make sure it's printed in
a clear font on acid-free paper, and stored in acid-free containers in
a dry environment, away from silverfish and other creepy-crawlies that
eat paper. For photos, for ultimate future-proofing, consider getting
photographic quality printouts made commercially, and specify.

I know, I'm taking a rather extreme view of the issue, and I'm
sidestepping the details of the original questions, but this is the
kind of thinking that I'm used to putting forward in a business context
for "everyday" data archiving and disaster recovery planning.

Obviously the response (from most people, at a hobby level) will be
"that's too hard", and of course it is. You just have to figure out
what level of future-proofing and recovery capability you can afford
(in terms of money and time), and what level of risk you are prepared
(constrained) to accept. It's the same balancing act whether it's a
business, a hobby or a national heritage, just the balancing point will
vary.

Sorry if I've confused or depressed you, Freddo, and anyone else with
the same question.

The short answer is "some other program".

Somebody mentioned HTML, and that's one of the most open text formats
in existence, but you also have have to figure out what graphics format
to use, and in that I'm not an expert. JPG is good for accessibility,
but it's a lossy format (ie you lose some of the picture information
when you convert to it). GIF is not lossy, but it's not an open format
either, and is becoming less accessible as more program developers
decide it's not worth paying the licence fees. Personally I'm going
with JPG at 80% quality for the time being, but that's for documents
which I'm scanning at 300dpi (or 200 when I forget to change the
default setting). I haven't settled on a standard for pictures, maybe
somebody else can make a suggestion.

Hope this helps, or at least doesn't hinder too much!

Lesley W.

[Steve Hayes]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:30:35 +1000, "Freddo" <[email protected]> wrote:

Maybe someone here would know or maybe suggest where I can ask this
question.

Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?

Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,

Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big

And also, most important, there may not be any program that will read a Word
document in 10-15 years time.

Have you tried reading a Multimate document recently? Or a DisplayWrite one?
Or a Wordstar or Electric Pencil one? Volkswriter?

Never entrust anything to a program that is copy-protected or has to be
"acvtivated".

In 15 years time you migth have the document, but scour the antique shops for
a copy of the program that will read it. But then, hey ho, the program has to
be "activated", and the firm has gone down the tubes, or been taken over by
someone else, or the phone as been disconnected.

Save them in JPEG.

Put them on a CD with a copy of Irfanview.

And copy them to DVD, and whatever supesedes DVD.

And your words?

Save them in Word by all means.

But save copies in PDF, RTF and Ascii too.



--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Robert M. Riches Jr.]

On 2005-10-27, Lesley Walker <[email protected]> wrote:

Somebody mentioned HTML, and that's one of the most open text formats
in existence, but you also have have to figure out what graphics format
to use, and in that I'm not an expert. JPG is good for accessibility,
but it's a lossy format (ie you lose some of the picture information
when you convert to it). GIF is not lossy, but it's not an open format
either, and is becoming less accessible as more program developers
decide it's not worth paying the licence fees. Personally I'm going
with JPG at 80% quality for the time being, but that's for documents
which I'm scanning at 300dpi (or 200 when I forget to change the
default setting). I haven't settled on a standard for pictures, maybe
somebody else can make a suggestion.

According to slashdot.org, the Unisys patent on GIF, US
Patent 4,558,302, was set to expire June 20, 2003. IIRC,
variant in other countries expired in 2004 or thereabouts.
Let's hope software developers aren't continuing to pay
license fees for expired patents. 1/2

By the way, PNG format has basically all the advantages of
GIF and none of the taint from the old patent.

Robert Riches
[email protected]
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

[Robert Heiling]

Freddo wrote:

Maybe someone here would know or maybe suggest where I can ask this
question.

Since it's both a genealogy and a computing topic, I would say that you
picked the best place to post your question.

Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?

MS Word is a proprietary product and should be avoided for that reason,
if for none other. Only MS has control over its definition, not the
public. There are certainly special Microsoft & non-Microsoft viewers
currently available, but the computer user must have taken the extra
effort to install them. The same principle holds true with Adobe and
their PDF format and the requirement of proprietary software to make
modifications.

Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,

Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big

and requires a clunky bloated piece of software to read it that not
everybody has on their computer. I would stick with open public formats
that have wide current support and acceptance. Those formats include
plain text, HTML, and JPG.

So, MS Word or some other program?
Thanks

Not that one and I wish that I had a strong recommendation for you, but
I'm struggling with this same issue myself. This is a complicated issue.
The commercial genealogy program world has let us down in this regard
and ignored our need to organize &nd catalog our family photographs
which are an integral part of our records. Yes, those programs will
point to and
display photos if we locate the images where mandated, but they don't
offer any type of slide show or browsing feature for the images. Then
all of this should
also be transportable via a sort of GEDCOM-like standard.

As also mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I believe that HTML is the
only real practical choice and good free browsers that are frequently
updated will be available for the foreseeable future. Likewise the JPG
format for images is commonly accepted and supported. I don't believe
that being a "lossy" format is a concern since saving as a JPG should
only be the *last* step in any series of image editing. I would keep the
images separate from the HTML and descriptive text.

That leaves us with the image-naming, image-location, and HTML-Text
generation exercises. I locate all of my working images in the same
master folder as my genealogy program(s) at the C: level as that keeps
the most programs happy; i.e. C:\GENEALOGY contains everything and the
Programs, HTML, and Images are in separate sub-folders of that. That
way, any & all programs can use the same images without conflict. I
continue to research and think about the best way to generate the
HTML-text files and include search and slide show capabilities.

Bob

[Lesley Walker]

Bob wrote:

That leaves us with the image-naming, image-location, and HTML-Text
generation exercises. I locate all of my working images in the same
master folder as my genealogy program(s) at the C: level as that keeps
the most programs happy; i.e. C:\GENEALOGY contains everything and the
Programs, HTML, and Images are in separate sub-folders of that. That
way, any & all programs can use the same images without conflict. I
continue to research and think about the best way to generate the
HTML-text files and include search and slide show capabilities.

I tend to suspect that MySQL (or similar) and PHP may be of some use
here, but right now that's a "roll your own" solution and most of us
don't have the skills to do that. It's on my list of "things to learn
one day".

Oh, and I should have mentioned in my previous long-winded post, also
keep copies of the source code for any software involved.

Lesley W.

[Lesley Walker]

Robert Riches wrote:

According to slashdot.org, the Unisys patent on GIF, US
Patent 4,558,302, was set to expire June 20, 2003. IIRC,
variant in other countries expired in 2004 or thereabouts.
Let's hope software developers aren't continuing to pay
license fees for expired patents. 1/2

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that.

Lesley W.

[Freddo]

Ah, Freddo here. May I just step in quickly to say thanks for your responses
and the very interesting discussion. I am taking note of some very useful
tips you all mention and if you have more, feel free to continue ..
Cheers

[Lesley Walker]

Earlier today, I wrote:

I tend to suspect that MySQL (or similar) and PHP may be of some use

Further to this, I googled for "open source photo database" and found
this very interesting article, which tends to support my suspicion:

Open source helps Flickr share photos
http://software.newsforge.com/article.p ... /27/170244

I think there's a bit of a gap in the market here, as the search didn't
seem to throw up a lot in the way of applications. Any PHP developers
out there looking for something to do?

Lesley W.

[Dave Hinz]

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:30:35 +1000, Freddo <[email protected]> wrote:

Maybe someone here would know or maybe suggest where I can ask this
question.

Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?

Nope. Even today not everyone owns Microsoft word (or even runs their
OS).

Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,

PDF was designed for this, is free, and platform-independant.

Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big

not everyone has it
real concerns about microsoft documents containing virus payloads
reluctance to open word docs from unknown sources
not a format that displays consistantly on different computers

So, MS Word or some other program?

I'd make a PDF. Adobe has a "print to pdf" feature on their website,
might be worth a try. If you have a mac, a linux box, or, well,
anything other than windows, PDF creation is built in. There's dozens
of options for Windows, probably some free ones. But, anyone with a
modern computer today can open a PDF, and if there's any sort of
"standard" for format for "display like this and don't let 'em mess it
up", it's PDF.

Dave Hinz

[Robert Heiling]

Lesley Walker wrote:

Earlier today, I wrote:
I tend to suspect that MySQL (or similar) and PHP may be of some use

Further to this, I googled for "open source photo database" and found
this very interesting article, which tends to support my suspicion:

Open source helps Flickr share photos
http://software.newsforge.com/article.p ... /27/170244

I think there's a bit of a gap in the market here, as the search didn't
seem to throw up a lot in the way of applications. Any PHP developers
out there looking for something to do?

Perhaps there's some potential there, but let's keep the OP's original
question in mind:

"Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily
access?",

and consider a couple of scenarios. The first is where a relative opens
the mail tomorrow and there is a DVD there. Upon opening that DVD with
the computer, that relative sees a number of folders/directories and
files. The second scenario occurs 10 years from now when a relative
receives a DVD or that day's equivalent storage medium with that very
same data on it and looks at it with a computer. In the package with the
DVD (or equivalent) were instructions.

If the instructions said to open "filename.html", would there be some
chance of success? Likewise for filename.doc? Likewise for a MySQL\PHP
output?

Bob

[Dale DePriest]

Robert M. Riches Jr. wrote:

On 2005-10-27, Lesley Walker <[email protected]> wrote:

Somebody mentioned HTML, and that's one of the most open text formats
in existence, but you also have have to figure out what graphics format
to use, and in that I'm not an expert. JPG is good for accessibility,
but it's a lossy format (ie you lose some of the picture information
when you convert to it). GIF is not lossy,

Most cameras already use jpg so it is not any more lossy than the
original if you don't edit the picture. Even so, for photographs the
loss is generally not noticed and in some cases can improve the looks of
the picture. It is not a good format for text or graphics.

Gif is lossy too, but in a different way. It loses color data since it
only supports 256 colors.


--
_ _ Dale DePriest
/`) _ // http://users.cwnet.com/dalede
o/_/ (_(_X_(` For GPS and GPS/PDAs

[Joe Makowiec]

On 28 Oct 2005 in soc.genealogy.computing, Robert Heiling wrote:

The second scenario occurs 10 years from now when a relative
receives a DVD or that day's equivalent storage medium with that
very same data on it and looks at it with a computer. In the package
with the DVD (or equivalent) were instructions.

The converse to this is:

Your aunt died 10 years ago, and your cousin just sent you her stash of
genealogy stuff. Auntie was very careful about backing up, etc, so
everything is on diskette. Digging out a computer from the basement, you
open the (5 1/4" DS-DD) floppy, and the readme.txt file begins: Open
ourfamily.ws in Wordstar...

--
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe

[Denis Beauregard]

Le Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:48:27 GMT, Joe Makowiec
<[email protected]> écrivait dans soc.genealogy.computing:

On 28 Oct 2005 in soc.genealogy.computing, Robert Heiling wrote:

The second scenario occurs 10 years from now when a relative
receives a DVD or that day's equivalent storage medium with that
very same data on it and looks at it with a computer. In the package
with the DVD (or equivalent) were instructions.

The converse to this is:

Your aunt died 10 years ago, and your cousin just sent you her stash of
genealogy stuff. Auntie was very careful about backing up, etc, so
everything is on diskette. Digging out a computer from the basement, you
open the (5 1/4" DS-DD) floppy, and the readme.txt file begins: Open
ourfamily.ws in Wordstar...

Worse: she had a commodore 64 or an atari


Denis

[Robert Heiling]

Joe Makowiec wrote:

On 28 Oct 2005 in soc.genealogy.computing, Robert Heiling wrote:

The second scenario occurs 10 years from now when a relative
receives a DVD or that day's equivalent storage medium with that
very same data on it and looks at it with a computer. In the package
with the DVD (or equivalent) were instructions.

The converse to this is:

Your aunt died 10 years ago, and your cousin just sent you her stash of
genealogy stuff. Auntie was very careful about backing up, etc, so
everything is on diskette. Digging out a computer from the basement, you
open the (5 1/4" DS-DD) floppy, and the readme.txt file begins: Open
ourfamily.ws in Wordstar...

Heh heh heh! I have all of that sitting here including the 5 1/4"
drive and the complete installation package for Wordstar.<vbg>

But all of that aside, I hope your point was to equate the ourfamily.ws
and ourfamily.doc & ourfamily.\php?\sql? [how else to say it?]
situations. If she had the ourfamily.html !! and unclejoe.jpg on the
medium, then I would be sitting here gleefully looking at it all with
Firefox.<g>

Bob

[Joe Makowiec]

On 28 Oct 2005 in soc.genealogy.computing, Robert Heiling wrote:

But all of that aside, I hope your point was to equate the ourfamily.ws
and ourfamily.doc & ourfamily.\php?\sql? [how else to say it?]
situations. If she had the ourfamily.html !! and unclejoe.jpg on the
medium, then I would be sitting here gleefully looking at it all with
Firefox.

I suspect html files (which are, after all, plain text) and jpeg images
are going to be more future-proof than most. However, how many have
access to machines in the here and now which understand EBCDIC encoding
(which is also plain text)?

Another of my pet theories is that the best way to store stuff is to rent
space on a *nix server, upload to it, and just keep paying. The server
will probably get periodically upgraded, bringing the files along.

I sense a business opportunity here - long-term online storage and file
standards upgrade, so that stuff on my server will be upgraded to, say,
Unicode from ascii to keep it current.

--
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe

[Robert Heiling]

Denis Beauregard wrote:

Le Fri, 28 Oct 2005 15:48:27 GMT, Joe Makowiec
[email protected]> écrivait dans soc.genealogy.computing:

On 28 Oct 2005 in soc.genealogy.computing, Robert Heiling wrote:

The second scenario occurs 10 years from now when a relative
receives a DVD or that day's equivalent storage medium with that
very same data on it and looks at it with a computer. In the package
with the DVD (or equivalent) were instructions.

The converse to this is:

Your aunt died 10 years ago, and your cousin just sent you her stash of
genealogy stuff. Auntie was very careful about backing up, etc, so
everything is on diskette. Digging out a computer from the basement, you
open the (5 1/4" DS-DD) floppy, and the readme.txt file begins: Open
ourfamily.ws in Wordstar...

Worse: she had a commodore 64 or an atari

No problem! if the physical medium hasn't been corrupted somehow.
There are always enough hobbyists around to convert it (see my response
to Joe).

I apparently should have been more explicit when I said: "or that day's
equivalent" though, as I meant that for data that had been rolled over
in the media over the years to keep that aspect current. In saying that
I was trying to avoid having people jump out and say that a DVD couldn't
possibly have lasted that long and side-tracking the discussion. I
wanted to keep the focus on the data type, i.e. MS-Word .doc vs others,
to keep the focus on the OP's topic.

Bob

[Dave Hinz]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:52:43 -0700, Robert Heiling <[email protected]> wrote:

Denis Beauregard wrote:

Worse: she had a commodore 64 or an atari

No problem! if the physical medium hasn't been corrupted somehow.
There are always enough hobbyists around to convert it (see my response
to Joe).

Assuming it hasn't bitrotted by now. I've had a hard time restoring 8
year old enterprise quality backup tapes; consumer grade stuff could be
even more of a challenge, especially if it was stored in a less than
ideal environment.

[Robert Heiling]

Joe Makowiec wrote:

On 28 Oct 2005 in soc.genealogy.computing, Robert Heiling wrote:

But all of that aside, I hope your point was to equate the ourfamily.ws
and ourfamily.doc & ourfamily.\php?\sql? [how else to say it?]
situations. If she had the ourfamily.html !! and unclejoe.jpg on the
medium, then I would be sitting here gleefully looking at it all with
Firefox.

I suspect html files (which are, after all, plain text) and jpeg images
are going to be more future-proof than most.

Right. Although ongoing developments in html will continue to obsolete
the browsers that don't continue to upgrade, I doubt that old html code
itself will be obsoleted. That's why I'm feeling more and more
comfortable with a scheme that maintains jpeg images along with plain
text files (one per jpeg using the same filename). Given those, any html
can be generated automatically. There are a number of programs such as
Picasa2, Adobe Elements, and others that put together slideshows and
photo viewing from the jpeg's, but don't automatically combine the text.
The hurdle needs to be jumped as yet.

Bob

[Robert Heiling]

Dave Hinz wrote:

On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:52:43 -0700, Robert Heiling <[email protected]> wrote:
Denis Beauregard wrote:

Worse: she had a commodore 64 or an atari

No problem! if the physical medium hasn't been corrupted somehow.
There are always enough hobbyists around to convert it (see my response
to Joe).

Assuming it hasn't bitrotted by now.

"corrupted somehow"?

I've had a hard time restoring 8
year old enterprise quality backup tapes; consumer grade stuff could be
even more of a challenge, especially if it was stored in a less than
ideal environment.

Realistically, anybody with that hardware would most likely have all of
their genealogy research results on good old paper. There wasn't much in
the way of good software available back then I believe.

Bob

[Hugh Watkins]

Steve Hayes wrote:

On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 16:30:35 +1000, "Freddo" <[email protected]> wrote:


Maybe someone here would know or maybe suggest where I can ask this
question.

Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?

Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,

Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big


And also, most important, there may not be any program that will read a Word
document in 10-15 years time.

Have you tried reading a Multimate document recently? Or a DisplayWrite one?
Or a Wordstar or Electric Pencil one? Volkswriter?

Never entrust anything to a program that is copy-protected or has to be
"acvtivated".

In 15 years time you migth have the document, but scour the antique shops for
a copy of the program that will read it. But then, hey ho, the program has to
be "activated", and the firm has gone down the tubes, or been taken over by
someone else, or the phone as been disconnected.

Save them in JPEG.

Put them on a CD with a copy of Irfanview.

And copy them to DVD, and whatever supesedes DVD.

And your words?

Save them in Word by all means.

But save copies in PDF, RTF and Ascii too.

txt and csv

are the basics
a ged is just a txt file made according to rules

Hugh W

[Scott Barnes]

Dave Hinz ([email protected]) says...

There's dozens of options for Windows, probably some free ones.

My favorite free Windows PDF generator is PDF Creator:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Like many PDF generators, PDF Creator appears as a printer, allowing one
to use it with almost any Windows application.

-- Scott

[Kerry Raymond]

I suspect html files (which are, after all, plain text) and jpeg images
are going to be more future-proof than most.

Indeed. With electronic formats, nothing is "future-proof" but obviously
choosing a format that is very popular today increases the likelihood of
widely available conversion tools when it comes time to migrate to new
formats in the future. New formats are inevitable, so nobody can adopt a
complete "set and forget" philosophy to an online archive of photos.

When using JPG, can I suggest using the comment field within the file to
store the photo caption. That way, if the file is copied, the caption is
retained with the file. Unfortunately a lot of photo album software (and
Windows properties) keep the captions separate to the image files, and when
the images files are given to someone else, the captions are lost.

On Windows, we use edjpgcom to do add the captions into the JPG file. Find
it at http://home.cfl.rr.com/maderik/edjpgcom/
On Linux we use wrjpgcom (which seems to come standard on your Linux
distribution).

We use this caption-in-the-file technique to automatically construct our
cemetery photo WWW pages, where we use Photo Frame

http://photoframe.sourceforge.net/

scripts to automatically generate the HTML captions and slideshow etc. See
here for an example:

http://www.chapelhill.homeip.net/Family ... -Brisbane/

However, this Photo Frame software uses PHP on the WWW server, so it is not
suitable for everyone use to display their photos as many WWW hosts do not
offer PHP support. So I don't propose using Photo Frame as a general
solution for making photos available to people (but if you have PHP
available, it's hard to beat for ease of effort).

Kerry

[Robert Heiling]

When using JPG, can I suggest using the comment field within the file to
store the photo caption. That way, if the file is copied, the caption is
retained with the file.

Some time back, I became rather enthused about using that method until I
ran a number of tests and discovered just how easily that information
was lost. It wasn't only a matter of losing it by converting the image
to some other non-JPG format and later back to JPG, but of losing it
while remaining a JPG. For example and to refresh my memory, I just now
used edjpgcom.exe to add some caption text to a JPG photograph. I saved
it and then read it back with edjpgcom.exe and the info was there. I
then read it with PaintShopPro 5.00 and simply did a Save (as JPG).
Reading it again with edjpgcom.exe demonstrated that the info had been
lost.

Now yes, I should & do keep backups, but text files take a lot less
space than a double set of image files. That would be on top of my
original scans which I keep as original unmodified scans in a non-lossy
format for indefinite backup. Those images won't accept that caption
info.

Unfortunately a lot of photo album software (and
Windows properties) keep the captions separate to the image files, and when
the images files are given to someone else, the captions are lost.

And we see above how there is another way to lose them. Not all imaging
programs will display that info either and it's not exactly right out in
front when and if they do. When I give images files to anyone, the
caption information in text goes along with them.

That method appears to work quite well for your purposes, but it has too
many downsides for me to seriously adopt it.

Bob