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  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : Robert Wuttke <robert.wuttke@disc.com.au>
  Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 09:11:20 +101800

Re: SO and WP both useless! (almost)

Topic: PDF not the answer, but I still don't
need to get a new laptop with wind98 so as to
create docs.
Brevity: none.
Keeping to subject: light to variable.

================================================
Robert,

Thanks for that comment.
I think that puts the final nail in the 
"PDF as standard document format" theory.
When I htink about it logically, it never
had a chance.
Postscript ultimately really doesn't represent
text at all -- it has alphabets and glyphs.
But the association with actual text is a bit loose.
For instance, bold and italic are
only really present in the viewed fonts -- the
names of the fonts only give clues or hints as to
the font style. Likewise, there's nothing to really
absolutely distinguish math symbols from ascii text or
various font encodings etc.
Ultimately, PostScript just produces cubic splines.
Converting PostScript output to text would require
OCR or something.

In the meantime, I'm discovering that the hint from
Matthew Geddes (Wed 16 Feb 2000) that SO can save
wind95 format (word 6?) much better than the wind98 
format (word 7) may be a good way to go.
I've still got an old wind95 dual-boot machine
(which I will keep that way, because I still have
about 20 CD-ROMs of software that I ahven't taken
the plastic off yet) from the days when I couldn't
get linux to do anything sensible with my
ethernet card and video card.
So I'll use that to preview stuff before sending
documents to the people who are paying a lot of
money per square metre for the document, and therefore
have a right to see something that they can use.

In parallel, I'm still going down the Word-Perfect
path. I still remember that back in 1989, Word Perfect
was regarded as the more professional word processor,
and MS-Word was considered an ugly piece of software
suitable for engineers only (it had useful features
to show changes to IEEE specs as they were being
developed before publication). And I insisted (to the
detriment of my best interests) on doing everything
in plain TeX. I'm amazed that after 10 years, the
document formats issue is still primeval. Hardware
has soared to unimagine heights - while software
is still emerging out of the swamp.

If the rise and rise of linux is accompanied by an
emphasis on good, open standards for file formats
(not just a bunch of free software for people
who don't wear suits), then a new era of software
evolution based on open interface standards as opposed
to ye olde proprietary formats (private intellectual
property!) may dawn. If the Internet had 20 different
inter-network protocols which went through a new
version (and service packs) every year or two,
we'd still be sending mag tapes through the post!

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

-- 
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