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From: vu0310@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (R. Kym Horsell)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Universal machine-readable format?
Message-ID: <3847@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 15 Aug 90 22:00:11 GMT
References: <1990Aug15.165518.16675@phri.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: vu0310@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (R. Kym Horsell)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 24

In article <1990Aug15.165518.16675@phri.nyu.edu> roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
>
>	If you had to send some data in machine-readable form to somebody
>(perhaps many, unspecified, people), but had no idea what kind of machine
>they had, what format/media would you use to maximize the probability that
>it would be readable by the recipient?  The quantity of data is small enough

Having worked in industry and college environments for a couple of
decades, I have stuck this kind of problem over and over again
(usually from the other end -- someone brings along a tape or
floppy and says "I want to upload this but I don't know what
format it is...").

If this were the 60's or 70's I'd advise punched cards.

If this were the 70's or 80's I might advise 1600 bpi, 9 track
tape, fixed-length records, fixed-length blocks of 4000 bytes or
so (longer ones are trouble for some machines), ASCII character set,
no volume or file labels (or, if you must, ANSII labels).

This being the 90's you might try to forget media entirely
and let the user/customer upload via anonymous login/ftp.

-Kym Horsell