At 10:19 AM 9/28/2005, Carl Husa wrote:
>I'm concerned about audit trails, reference and methods of 
>affirmatively demonstrating an electronic document's fidelity to the 
>print document from which it was encoded.
>
>So, and if this question is inapporpriate for this list I apologize 
>and seek your kind indulgence:  how can I determine, and prove, that 
>the content of an electronic document faithfully and exactly 
>reproduces the content of the source print document?

I think this is a fascinating question and not at all inappropriate 
for the list.

In general, I don't think that proving that the content of an e-text 
faithfully and exactly reproduces anything is possible, at least in 
the sense meant here. It's like taking a photograph of a painting and 
then "proving" that the photograph is faithful to the painting. Or at 
least to those characteristics of the painting representable in a photograph.

You can, however, look at the painting and the photograph and 
determine this for yourself. Or perhaps take two photographs with two 
different cameras and then compare them: where there are 
discrepancies, you don't know which is right but you know at least 
one of them is wrong. Similarly, the reason conversion vendors will 
"double key" a text (have two different typists transcribe it) is so 
they can identify errors: the chances being supposed to be low that 
both typists will make the same errors. Of course it doesn't prove 
anything, but it does increase accuracy and fidelity by catching 
errors while they can still be fixed.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:[log in to unmask]
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
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