In my previous post on formats, I ended up leaning towards a wait-and-see approach to format registry design. Unfortunately, I don't really have that luxury. The SCAPE project needs to collect more format information to assist preservation planning and other processes. We even have some effort available to help build and/or fill a registry. But which registry should we try fill?
Bill's earlier post and this one from Chris Rusbridge have spurred me to try to describe what I discovered about PRONOM format records during my editable registry experim
This is what the first year of OPF development on the Planets Suite codebase looks like...
I've been keeping an eye on the #anadp11 Twitter backchannel, particularly the discussion about standards. I'm not there, so I don't know what points have been made, but I want to try to head off a common misconception. Standards are wonderful things, but the standard itself is not enough. It's the social consensus built by the standardisation process that counts, and that ensures the standard will be adopted and sustained.
I've finally had time to consider David Rosenthal's response to my argument in favour of format normalisation as a preservation strategy.
After Ross's post, I thought I'd better follow up on my format registry thoughts and show you all my response to Adam's challenge.