Date   : Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:13:22 +0100
From   : joel@... (Joel Rowbottom)
Subject: Domesday Preservation

Hi Charlie --

On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:04:46 +0100, Charlie Robson
<Charlie.Robson@...> wrote:

>>Daft question we keep coming back to - why emulate?
> 
> Why is the data being grabbed? Because the remaining disks are rotting.
The
> hardware is flaky. Only 3 people in the world can see it outsides of a
> show. Because we can.

I think you're missing my point.

While it's nice to emulate and have it in the original mechanism, with all
the effort we're going to for this why aren't we using some of the more
modern tools at our disposal to index and represent the data (as opposed to
going for the much older interface, or at least working alongside it)?

Most of the interest I'm seeing when I exhibit the Domesday Project is from
grown-up kids who'd never seen their work, or from teachers who had
co-ordinated the contributions. While it's nice to have access to the
original interface in some way, I'd suggest making the data accessible to
man-on-street is actually more important - something which was provided by
domesday1986.com but is sadly not available any more.

That said, I quite like the idea of emulating it in Flash in a window on a
web browser, although using some SQL server and a bit more intelligence,
Google Maps or OSM, etc. would create a stonking archive.

[ Please note, I am not denigrating the importance of "Because We Can" -
goodness knows I've got enough of those types of projects going on ;) ]



j