RE: [xml-dev] The year is 2027, and we need to examine archived X ML doc

[Len Bullard <len.bullard@uai.com>]

True about the text to rags to printed documents but to rich controls that
render once and might render the same thing five minutes later but might
not?

Keep in mind that hypermedia is at its most basic the intermixing of
controls into text.  If the idea of archiving a legal document is to infer
or deduce the state of transaction or mind 20 or 40 years hence, the path
taken in the instance of determining the state is also required.

This is why in the doc brouhaha, I say it is a bitter butter battle over
dodos.  It is important today given legacy but the technical surge is away
from the print formats to the interactive formats which are state-driven.
Snapshots we can archive reasonably well.

Again, it isn't just XML but XML plus code or codebehind (pick a language
and hope it keeps getting picked often).

No free lunch.  IOW, this discussion may resolve in understanding the limits
of what information XML can archive or will archive and the costs of
maintenance.

len


From: Frank Richards [mailto:frank@therichards.org] 
 
Xml is text. Archival text storage is a well understood issue. Rag paper 
in a proper climate has a demonstrated life of centuries, which can be 
reasonably extrapolated to millennia. And you get to store not only your 
metadata but your decoding instructions the same way.
 
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