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RE: Last Call: 'Proposed Experiment: Normative Format in Additionto ASCII Text' to Experimental RFC (draft-ash-alt-formats)

2006-06-15 07:57:22
 
The document does not specify a particular variety of PDF. There are
many.

This comment has been made many times, and answered equally many.
One of the objects of the experiment os to determine the details of the
PDF to be used.
PDF/A has been suggested.

The document does not specify the permitted embedded data formats. 
PDF allows raster and vector images, JavaScript, form validation,
fonts, and much more.

Once again, this has been discussed to death on this list.


PDF and some possible embedded data formats are patent encumbered.
There are IPR disclosures available.

Read Adobe's RFC 3667 disclosure. They grant a royalty-free license
to anyone who wants to write software to manipulate PDFs,
as long as they are compliant to the specification.
Sounds sufficient to my (IPR trained) eyes.

The document incorrectly states that RFC 1119 is available in
"PDF/PostScript", when it is only available in PostScript.

Go to the RFC editor page and serach for 1119.
You will get the following screen:

 Choose a file format
  Text   rfc1119.txt
  PDF   rfc1119.pdf
  PS     rfc1119.ps

The filenames all have simple links to files, nothing is generated
on-the-fly.

I agree that clicking on the txt version gives an incorrect message that
the file is only available in ps.

The authors state that "commercial" software does support ASCII well.
Their stated favorite editor, Microsoft Word, does not and will not
support PDF:

As one of the authors I hereby state that Word is not my favorite editor
(if it is an editor at all).  However, the clear intent was that IF the
IETF
does not want to use a commercially available tool, then the next
possibility
is to use a well-defined format.

The process outlined in this document is completely inappropriate for
an archival document series, for the reasons outlined above. 
Those were just the glaringly obvious concerns. There are probably
more.

What seems to be glaringly obvious is that the same reasons are brought
up time and time again,
as if for the first time.  I assume that the strategy is to bore the
authors of this draft into submission
(or in this case into retraction of a submission).

Y(J)S

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