For me the PDF/proprietary debate is long from over.
For instance, on what "John P. Tomany" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
on: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 10:06:52 -0500
> IMO, there is no better way than PDF for governments and businesses to
> provide forms, instructions, and other data. A PDF file printed on your
> home printer is absolutely identical to the original printed version,
> regardless of the platform used to retrieve it. No other software/method
> can say that.
Now it may be justified to have "forms" reproduced to the pixel
precisely - those then which someone would have to fill in, send
(snail) back so they could read (perhaps) with a scanner (or chequed
by some bureaucracy). [Though this could be done as well using fax if
there's much of a hurry.]
But already with "instructions" this seems less evident as long as
they consist of text. And it's completely obsolete with any type of
"information" consisting of text, like laws, rulings, authorities'
decision on this or that. Or, for that matter, transscripts of
parliamentary debates.
These are things that have to be available with the broadest possible
accessibility codition per definition, and *not* only for
(a) a select minority of people who can affort latest, most-expensive
equipment, or
(b) by grace of a private company maintaining - perhaps... - some kind
of gateway/forwarding service.
Now what do my unbelieving eyes have to see ? The Great British
Hansard (i.e. the public transscript of parliamentary debates) as well
as a number of purely text-containing ministerial announcements are only
accessible (on the web) as PDF formatted documents; some of these are
even *only* accessible in that format at all. And my unbelieving ears
even hear that something like this is going on in Sweden too.
The effect of this is a hardly disguised form of "secret" laws -
rather a sign of dictatorial regimes; while among the constituing
elements of democarcy there's the clear conditions for "laws" (i.e.,
all sorts of rulings pertaining to, and information concerning, the
public at large) to be "public".
Heimo Claasen / <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> / Brussels 1999-04-03
HomePage of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.inti.be/hammer
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