[Novalug] comment: recent point "MS Office self incompatible over 5 years"

Bryan J Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Tue May 12 06:58:22 EDT 2015


On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 7:19 PM, William Sutton via Novalug <
novalug@firemountain.net> wrote:

> and yet... and yet... when it comes to digital data, it doesn't
> necessarily have the usable shelf life of older media.  Extreme case:
> people are still reading Egyptian monuments thousands of years later, but
> good luck if your important data files are on a zip/bernoulli/floppy disk,
> or in a format nobody reads anymore (WordStart?  WordPerfect? QuatroPro?).


​Ummm ... WordPerfect was _preferred_ by law and medicine for decades
because of its strong, backward compatibility.  I know many institutions
that were still using it through the '00s.

In fact, in every single case they switched, all of the law and medical
practicioners were against the change, but it was a clerical move by
non-professionals, namely a business decision.



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