Newsgroups: comp.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Universal machine-readable format?
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 90 04:52:25 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Aug17.045225.15087@looking.on.ca>
References: <1990Aug15.165518.16675@phri.nyu.edu> <3025@aix.aix.kingston.ibm.com>

Actually, you would do pretty well with a 5.25 inch, 360K format DOS
floppy with the file as a binary there, if it's less than 360K.

Almost everybody has access to a machine that can read one of those.
Even people with the nicer 3.5 inch disks are very likely to have a machine
around with both kinds of disk to do a file transfer.  Or a transfer program.

You may have to add the 3.5 inch anyway, because all-Mac shops would have
some trouble.   And in fact, most, but not all IBM-PC shops probably have
one machine around today that can read a 3.5 inch disk.

Modern Macs can read the 3.5 inch disks with the Apple File Exchange.
Atari STs can read them fine, too.


Almost complete safety thus comes from using both.  No need for an extra
Mac disk due to the AFE.

The suggestion of 9-track tape is ludicrous.  Today, the vast majority of
computer users would not know what to do with it.  Only people at big
shops that have mainframes and minis (and that is now a *very* small
proportion of the computer user community) could read it, and many of them
might have no easy way to move the file to the destination machine.

On the other hand, people with minis/mainframes are now usually quite capable
of uploading an IBM-PC file.  Many are using Micros as terminals anyway.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473