[odf-discuss] Mars: XMLisation of PDF - opportunity for ODF?

[Daniel Carrera]

On Fri, 2006-10-11 at 03:06 -0500, Lars D. Noodén wrote:
> > From an archaeological point of view, using compression is a bad thing.
> [snip]
> 
> It's not so much from the complexity of the algorithm.  That can be 
> cracked.

You make it sound like it's easy. Shanon might disagree with you :) The
point is that the better the algorithm is, the more it looks like random
noise. Our descendants may not even notice that there's supposed to be
data there. Just like the SETI folk. They might be receiving tons of
broadcast from aliens and just not notice because it's indistinguishable
from noise. A hard disk packed with ODF files looks almost the same as a
hard disk packed with random noise. This will only get worse over the
following centuries as compression algorithms improve and look more like
random noise.

The point you make that losing a few bytes is more problematic if you
have compression is also valid, but the problem that the better the
compression the more uncrackable the code is is definitely true.

For archival purposes I think ODF files should be stored uncompressed.
I'd put each file in a different directory and unzip it. I'd also store
images in BMP instead of PNG.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
"I AM in shape. Round IS a shape."
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