Thomas Leitch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Market share: lots. > > That's the definition of portable as possible.
I disagree. As portable as possible means something will work on the greatest number of different systems, not on the greatest number of a single system. Today, 7-bit ASCII is the most portable text interchange format, a (very) lowest common denominator which is portable to any computer system or device. 8-bit ASCII sets are better and are generally implemented in telephones. Unicode is far better but already less portable, most default implementations stop at extended Latin characters. HTML is quite portable, we take for granted today that markup allows us to view the same text on quite different systems. Then you have Microsoft Word format in a different flavor every three years which certainly has lots of market share, but is grotesque in terms of portability. This is precisely why there is so much interest in OpenDocument Format: open standards are the only way to reliably achieve interoperability. DRM has a catastrophic effect on portability, and is only useful to penalize the inexperienced. It's quite clear that content rights holders have to make a transition away from DRM which is a dead end. So the challenge going forward is to find a way to reward creators (and not necessarily companies and middlemen), and in particular to reward more the creators whose work is appreciated more. Perhaps the BBC would get less of a pounding if it took a leadership role in this regard. Sean. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
