Re: [Paddlewise] Copying legally . . .

On Thu, May 14, 1998 at 11:42:21PM -0400, Wynne Eden wrote:
> Please don't take this as a flame...but as far as I know PDF is a
> proprietary format too.  Adobe owns the rights to the "distiller" that
> writes "Portable Data Format" files in Acrobat, and distributes the only
> reader in Acrobat reader.  If there are others, especially cheaper others,
> I'd love to know.

You're correct, and you're not.

Lemme expain.  Yes, PDF is an Adobe-only format, however, the big differences
are that:

	1. They published the full specifications
	2. Free PDF readers exist for just about every platform
	3. Free PDF writers are starting to emerge as well

So while Adobe "owns" PDF and gets to modify it as they see fit, they
have recognized that the only way it will become popular (as PostScript
did in its time) is to ensure that anyone and everyone can create products
which cope with it.

Maybe I should use the phrase "non-published format" instead.

I'm using xpdf (free) and ghostview 5.10 (free) to deal with PDF here;
both run on a large variety of Unix/Linux systems, and I think ghostview
also runs on some other platforms (e.g. VMS).  I compiled both from the
source code -- also free.

One side point -- in re the PA DER site -- many of the documents there are
simple text such as meeting agendas, meeting minutes, regulations, etc.
There is *no need* whatsoever to format them in any fancy way because
no additional information is conveyed by such formatting.  (Unlike, say,
a technical report with embedded diagrams and tables and equations,
where typography can be used to assist the communication process.)
So not only have they put these documents in a proprietary format,
but in doing so they have needlessly bloated them from a few Kbytes to
sizes ranging from 10 to 25 times that size.

I'm all for conveying information -- and doubly so when it can be done
via the 'net.  But I'm also for conveying information *wisely*, which to
me means, among other things, carefully choosing when to get fancy and
when to stay simple.  I've made my own mistakes in this area, so I certainly
can't claim infallibility: but what the PA DER has done is clearly braindead.

---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
rsk_at_gsp.org
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