[jsdl-wg] Final call on JSDL 1.0

[Michel Drescher]

On 20 Oct 2005, at 10:54, Donal K. Fellows wrote:

> Michel Drescher wrote:
>
>> I am not concerned of copyright, I am concerned of the following:
>> a) hidden, historic text fragments people may unleash (un) 
>> intentionally
>>    [see several issues where highly sensitive political documents   
>> unleashed that
>>    correct data has been changed to incorrect contents to suite  
>> the  political party.
>>    Use Google to search for hidden historic content in Word  
>> documents.]
>>
>
> Since the document is still a draft, I'd imagine that the fact that it
> is in a format suitable for drafts would not be a major issue. I would
> expect it to be published as a PDF when it goes up on the list of  
> public
> documents; that's just a mechanical format change. On the other hand,
> tools for editing PDF documents are much less common in practice than
> tools for editing Word documents.

Especially if a document is changing over time, its (hidden!) history  
may be relevant to other people. While this is of less concern in a  
standards working group, it still remains an issue.

>> b) We are (beware, I am wearing my GGF hat) a *standards* group.
>>    The Word document format in itself is not standardised. The  
>> fact  that almost
>>    everybody uses it, does not qualify it as a real standard.
>>    To be honest, I really *do* prefer the OpenDocument format,   
>> standardised by
>>    OASIS. There are several word processors that do support this   
>> document format.
>>
>
> Surely it does not matter what format a working group uses to do its
> work as long as the group actually manages to do the work? (Note  
> that I
> differentiate the publication of versions for public comments and as
> actual standards recommendations; those are fixed documents and as  
> such
> should be PDF documents, the PDF format having a very good record of
> readability across deployments.)
>
> In other words, as long as we on the group can cope with Word, we're
> fine to use it for our drafts. Switching document formats *now*  
> would be
> a bad move!

Actually, it *does* matter. By publishing Word doc versions of a  
draft that is downloadable on the GGF website, even passive readers/ 
followers of a working group are forced to use Word.

I think, generally, it is no additional burden to pass the Word doc  
(sic!) between those people who generally have the pen, and publish  
publicly available PDF versions even of the drafts on the net.

If need be, I'll do that. Mac OS has built-in, very powerful PDF  
conversion.

>> c) Word is obviously inconsistent in itself (is this really new   
>> info?), see this
>>    funny hyperlink example. Other examples are different document   
>> formatting
>>    depending on the printer used (and fonts available on the   
>> system), etc.
>>
>
> Is this a critical issue in a draft? Is there any part of the
> specification of JSDL that depends on the layout of the content  
> upon the
> page? I'd hope not...

Consider this just as an error prevention. Those kind of errors  
quickly creep in.

>> d) Using Word documents forces every author to use Word as well.  
>> This  incurs
>>    substantial costs on all participants. While this is usually of  
>> a  lesser
>>    issues for larger companies (who do have Word licenses anyway)   
>> private
>>    persons (who should be attracted by *really* open  
>> standardisation  groups
>>    as well) are barred out except they invest in software.
>>    I find this quite ironic.
>> e) Interoperability (may also be seen as a subtopic of d) is an  
>> issue  here.
>>    People prefer different platforms for software development.  
>> Now, as
>>    everybody knows, Word is *NOT* available for i.e. Linux.   
>> [Personal rant:
>>    Why bother, there are tons of way more productive alternatives   
>> available!]
>>    So you force people to actively *buy* Windows (or, preferably,   
>> Mac OS X)
>>    *and* Word.
>>
>
> Does anyone have a LaTeX style file or class that produces documents
> compliant with the GGF document formatting rules? If anyone was to  
> work
> with anything other than word (the ability to import and export word
> docs is fairly common among word processors on Linux IIRC) I'd have to
> suggest that the only sane thing to use is a format that is known  
> to be
> ultra stable and which produces very high quality output indeed. By
> contrast, switching to OpenDoc as you suggested given the current  
> state
> of support for the format within Word (which, like it or not, is  
> what a
> fair number of us use) would impose significant costs of its own. The
> advantages of LaTeX are that virtually everyone who has ever  
> produced an
> academic paper has come into contact with it, and the format is  
> known to
> be practically stable across long periods of time (decades...)

I'd love to switch to LaTeX...

> All of which is completely moot for this working group. What triggered
> this rant?

I know I am late with the more general issues.

First off, I had the impression that Andreas intended to publish the  
Word version.
This was the initial trigger.

The rest was caused by me still acting like Don Quixote fighting the  
wind mills. Who volunteers being my Sancho Pansa? :-)

Cheers,
Michel