One matter not discussed here so far is which brand of 'English' is to be used? Which spellings, for instance? Andrew San Diego Well, 'everything' has NOT been switched to electronic format. It is just proposed that it is to be allowed. This has been the case for cultivar names for a while BUT with the proviso that certain institutions must possess hardcopies, or are provided with them by nurseries/authors. If technology was really so reliable and at the level needed, there would of course be something to translate an english description into botanical latin! T > I don't think the committee made a light decision to switch everything > to electronic format without first making it necessary to retrieve > such data many years in the future. Sure, PDFs will probably not exist > in a couple of decades, but the data behind such PDFs remain and could > be transferred to another format. > > In regard to loosing all the data on on one's computer, the idea of > electronic copies is that all the major servers on earth will have > access and storage of these data and retrievable from anywhere else. > If one server crashes, then others will still be online and available. > That is the power of the internet. Some people ask what if all the > servers on earth suddenly and simultaneously crash? The counter > argument is that if such a thing were to happen, we have a lot more to worry about than description of species! > > Nhu > > On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 8:20 AM, <totototo@telus.net> wrote: > > > On 21 Jul 2011, at 10:57, AW wrote: > > > > It also smells like a knee-jerk reaction "Oh, print is so > > old-school, so > > anti- > > digital, so anti-cybernetic." Tell that to someone whose home > > computer crashed and left them without printed backups of their > > contact lists. > >