Re: XyWrite to Word

["Thomas J Hawley" tjh@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "George Scithers"  on Thu,
23 Mar 2006 21:32:07 -0500

> This still leaves the ridiculously long files WORD uses, as
> compared with any pure text file.

That's true. Both XyWrite files and Word files carry not only text but also
formatting information, and the range of formatting possibilities in Word is
vastly greater than in XyWrite.

One problem for archivists is that the formatting of XyWrite documents will
probably be lost; in 50 years, no one will know what ≪IP.5IN,.5IN≫ means and
there will be no way to display the formatting. (We can hope that ascii text
will still be around!)

Word's new formats, on the other hand, are going to be so pervasive and so
widely documented that it's reasonable to assume that their formatting will be
capable of being recreated well into the future.

Word's files really aren't that big, unless your frame of reference is stuck in
the disk and memory technology of 20 years ago. But no one would defend Word's
current proprietary binary file format, and it will be a good riddance when it
goes.

Tom Hawley
New York
tjh@xxxxxxxx