Subject: Re: PDF versus HTML From: dave@idc.uucp (David R. Seaman) Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 03:54:22 GMT

Message-ID: <1995Apr6.175859.14272@idc.uucp>
Followup-To: comp.text.pdf
Organization: InfoDesign Corporation
References: <3lcul7$3nc@bell.maths.tcd.ie>  <3ljp63$jb9@news3.digex.net>
Lines: 81
Xref: news3.digex.net comp.text.pdf:220 comp.text.sgml:7196

In comp.text.pdf ashore@access3.digex.net (Arnold Shore) writes:
>... An important issue (at least for the
>govvie's in the audience) is the recent activity regarding PDDF as an ISO
>standard. Would someone post information regarding that initiative?  That
>seems important to the future of these standards. 


You may want to look in comp.text.sgml as there has been discussion
regarding this matter since last October.

For those who are not aware:

The (US) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is
currently working on an effort to reference PDF as a Federal
Information Processing Standard (FIPS). They have named the effort
Portable Document Delivery Format (PDDF) and they have a number of
requirements (19) they are trying to meet. These requirements started
as a joint paid effort between Adobe and NIST under a Cooperative
Research and Development Agreement (CRADA).

This effort appears to be clever marketing and lobbying by Adobe to get
approval of its proprietary technology.

There has been heated debate concerning this effort about a number of
issues of which the following are examples:

1/ The inability to meet the requirements for disabled access.

The International Committee for Accessible Document Design (ICADD)
stands behind International Standard ISO-12083, recently adopted, which
requires the minimal markup of a text stream. PDF does not support
this.

2/ The appropriateness of making a vendor's proprietary format info a
FIPS.

A number of the government departments did not speak in favour of the
current recommendations on the basis that Adobe controls the
specification. Sure they published it, but they own it and control it.

3/ The focus and scope of the FIPS

The FIPS will claim to be focused on "final form" documents, stating
the need to preserve the layout information. However, will use terms
such as Portable Document Delivery, instead of a recommended Portable
Page Format. The danger of implying document portability is that users
will expect revisable form information with this specification. In
addition, the requirements calling for hyperlinking and video are
beyond the original scope of this FIPS.  One also has to realize that
the "final form" for the print disabled is not the page version.



In general is has been perceived that the government is "presold" on
the PDF effort and has been going through the motions to appease the
bureaucratic process. There has been a strong backlash that is trying
to focus the government on solving specific issues and not lumping them
all together. Everyone should be focusing on the content of information
in an electronic medium, not the printed page.

If you have any comments that you wish to forward to the panel the
point of contact is:

Mike Rubinfeld
miker@sst.ncsl.nist.gov
NIST 225/B266, Gaithersburg, MD 20899
(301) 975-3064 (voice)
(301) 926-3696 (fax)

This is my option, and I hope this helps. Oh, and I also dislike
Acrobat because the CD they handed out at a trade show just trashed my
version of ATM and caused me no end of problems, and in the end I could
not get it to run. And of course there is no technical support
available, just the 1-900 number. (Plus I can't find a viewer for PDF
files on a DEC Ultrix machine.)


David R. Seaman
President/CEO InfoDesign Corporation
Vice-Chair    SGML Open
dave@idc.com


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