Bob,
I spent 5 minutes trying to find Edinburgh council open data but I
didn't find any. The format seems to be a moot point, if they don't
provide permission for use of the documents - or at least they make them
hard to find.
Once a council recognises the need for open data, I would hope the need
to avoid PDF is self evident - but I suspect it is a false hope. If they
can't figure that simple point out themselves, we could try to persuade
councils to use other formats but it probably will be an uphill
battle... From the little I have seen, councils who have a dedicated
open data website have recognised CSV as the defacto standard. (But I
could be wrong.)
My personal preferences for distribution are ODF, then CSV, then XML,
then Excel, then PDF. The reason I don't rate CSV as the best is there
is no definitive standard established. ODF is useful - even if I
personally convert it to CSV for my own processing purposes - I can
control the conversion. (Obviously for some things XML is the best,
particularly live streams of data.)
What I think is lacking is information that describes why open data is
important as a policy. This information is readily available for open
source software, in contrast. It is difficult to address the issue of
data generally, as "data" is such a broad term. (And yes there is
content out there, but it fragmented.)
Regards,
Tim
On 07/06/11 12:39, Bob Kerr wrote:
Do you think that a heatmap of the different formats released by the
councils, with an indication from us of preferred formats be worth
considering. I know that Edinburgh council uses pdf but I don't have
an idea of the status of other councils
cheers
Bob
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