But one of the important criteria for an acceptable alternate
form, one which came up in the earlier discussion on this list,
is that the format be searchable.
In case it wasn't clear, my quite informal suggestion was that one might
attach a few GIF illusttrations to an ASCII document, sort of like a paper
book that has a few color plates glued in the back. I agree it would be
nuts to put text into GIF.
More generally and to reinforce a point that I think Bob Braden
made, I believe there was general consensus on this IETF list
when the earlier discussion occurred that PDF, if it was to be
used, be narrowly profiled so as to permit only those variations
that appeared to be stable and meet various other criteria,
notably ease of searching and extraction by text copying
operations. It seems to me that this draft, by omitting
specifics about versions and features of PDF to be permitted
and, if it isn't obvious, how the submission or editing process
automatically verifies that those rules were followed, is not
responsive to that consensus. Arguably, on that basis, it
should never have been Last Called.
Entirely agree.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)iecc(_dot_)com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet
for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.
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