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[Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet s
From: |
michel.lavaud |
Subject: |
[Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web |
Date: |
Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:37:07 -0500 |
Changes
http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/210PamphletSupportOnMathAction/diff
--
On 7 Oct 2005 at 14:15, C Y wrote:
> I must be misunderstanding something - AFAIK pdf isn't proprietary.
> It's fully documented, and there is no restriction on creating either
> viewers or generaters for it. In what sense it is more or less
> proprietary than postscript or dvi or mathml?
The pdf format is proprietary _and_ fully documented - as is the Word format.
And
what Microsoft did, Adobe can do it : that is, he can decide some day to change
the
pdf format in a way incompatible with previous versions (as MS did for Word -
to
enhance performances, or increase his income or whatever reason), users cannot
do
anything against that. And if the modifications are not strictly upward
compatible with
preceding ones, some formulas included in scientific articles could become
inexact,
without the author being aware of it, and without the reader being able to
notice it :for
texts, the reader can easily detect and correct errors while reading, but this
is
impossible for formulas, in general.This could be as catastrophic for science
as the
burning of Alexandria's library.
Unfortunately, many scientists are not aware of this problem with pdf. Even
among
TeX developers, many promote replacing dvi by pdf. Pdf is acceptable for
short-life
documents, but not (IMHO) for scientific documents : only exactness certified
over
very long periods of time ought to be taken into consideration for science. It
does not
seem reasonable to rely on proprietary formats such as Word or pdf and cross
one's
fingers, hoping they won't do something wrong. Because some day, they will :-(
The most critical community against pdf lately were not scientists but lawyers,
because of Enron and other affairs, that generated "tons" of electronic
documents,
and they fear that these documents could become unreadable in the long term.
The
problem of defining an A-pdf format (Archival-pdf) was resurrected on this
occasion.
For scientists, I think it would be important that everybody realize the
problem, before
our libraries of pdf documents "burn". The dvi format is completely safe
because it is
frozen and very simple, and is very well suited because it has been devised for
science.
Best wishes,
address@hidden
http://www.univ-orleans.fr/EXT/ASTEX
ftp://ftp.univ-orleans.fr/pub/tex/PC/AsTeX
liste de discussion: address@hidden
Abonnement � la liste: envoyer un message de contenu
"sub astex Nom Prenom Etablissement" � address@hidden
--
forwarded from http://page.axiom-developer.org/zope/mathaction/address@hidden
- [Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web, unknown, 2005/10/07
- [Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web, root, 2005/10/07
- [Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web, root, 2005/10/07
- [Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web, Bill Page, 2005/10/07
- [Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web, root, 2005/10/07
- [Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web, C Y, 2005/10/07
- [Axiom-developer] PDF/A and pamphlet support on MathAction, Bill Page, 2005/10/09
- Re: [Axiom-developer] PDF/A and pamphlet support on MathAction, michel . lavaud, 2005/10/09
- Re: [Axiom-developer] PDF/A and pamphlet support on MathAction, C Y, 2005/10/09
[Axiom-developer] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, 2005/10/07