pardon, more electronic Shakespeare (42)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Tue, 14 Mar 89 20:08:00 EST
Humanist Mailing List, Vol. 2, No. 726. Tuesday, 14 Mar 1989.
Date: Monday, 13 March 1989 1955-EST
From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS
Subject: CD-ROM Access
I could hardly agree less with Brad Inwood's comment that
getting Shakespeare onto CD-ROM would be a "non-starter" --
well, actually he claims to be quoting SR, so I can disagree
with both at the same time. And how Brad sees this related to
"file transfer headaches" for IBYCUS is not clear to me.
Personally, I would love to have the Shakespeare on a CD-ROM,
preferably one that runs on IBYCUS (thus optimizing its
immediate usefulness and negating "transfer" issues), but
even one that runs on a standard "High-Sierra" format reader.
If I want to play with it, loading from the CD-ROM to my
machine is a minor inconvenience relative to what I lose by
having it only on a packet of diskettes. And if I have the
appropriate software to work with it from the CD-ROM (for the
non-IBYCUS world), all the better.
Speaking for Librarians, which I am not, and Archivers, which I
am (sort of), the fixed CD-ROM form is preferable to the
uncontrolled read/write diskette medium. At least I know what
I have, and can get back to it as a control. It does not prohibit
me from offloading and making changes on hard disk or diskette
(unless access to the CD-ROM is protected, of course), but it
protects me from making fatal data destroying errors on the
base text. Don't knock it until you've tried it. I've been
working with CD-ROM data for almost four years now, and I would
not like to go back to the other approaches, for highly verified
materials that I want to consult easily and often.
Bob Kraft (CCAT)