Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
names ending in “.txt”. Sometimes this does not do what is expected, as with “con-
fig.mpg”. In other cases we can do something with the file but not very much, as
with “table.txt”.
Some others mentioned in the introduction, such as family photographs
(“face.jpg”, Fig. 4.1 ) are very similar in that what one expects is to display or play
contents of the file and then it is up to the viewer, or listener, to understand it. Of
course one is not listening to the bits - what we mean is that there is an application
which is used to convert the bits to an image or a sound. The application may also
allow one to zoom in to part of an image or search for a piece of text or copy a piece
of music and insert it in a separate file. But even without these extra functions, one
can make use of the file, by which we mean we can look at or hear the output of the
application and we would be quite happy if that was all we could do.
These type of files - let's use the term Digital Object as a more general term
instead of “file”- we will refer to as Rendered Digital Objects . For these types of
objects it is (currently) normally regarded as sufficient if in future one can simply
display it if it is an image or movie, or play it if it is a sound.
These are the types of digital objects which one commonly deals with in everyday
life, documents, images, web pages etc. There are many topics which talk about the
preservation of these kinds of objects:
word processor documents
financial files
spreadsheets
databases of various sorts
...
..
Throughout this topic we will also look at examples from a variety of disciplines
including science, cultural heritage and contemporary performing arts.
Science
Observations of the Earth from space, including multi-spectral images, synthetic
aperture radar images
Measurements of the atmosphere, chemical or electrical composition
Software for processing raw date to data which is scientifically useful
Cultural Heritage
Laser scans of buildings and artefacts
Plans of buildings
3-D virtual reality models
Performing Arts
“patch” file for processing what the performer plays
configuration file which map video capture of movement to musical performance.
All the above are just some of the example of “non-rendered” data which are of
importance to society.
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