Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful

Subject: Re: Formatting Objects considered harmful
From: Paul Prescod <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 09:38:06 -0500
"John E. Simpson" wrote:
> 
> The people who publish PDF on the Web today aren't to my mind any
> differently motivated than those who publish Excel spreadsheets on the Web.
> (1) They have a certain amount of confidence, misplaced or otherwise, that
> viewers of their pages will have installed (or *can* install, maybe with
> their browsers' help) appropriate plug-ins. (2a) Their application doesn't
> require, or (2b) they themselves don't understand or care about the value
> of, separation of form and content. (3) Tools exist for easily creating
> that content.
> 
> I'm no psychologist but common sense says that if they've got reasons for
> using PDF today they'll continue to do so.

So XFOTs have all of the costs and benefits of PDF -- except that XFOTs do
*not* require a plugin because their implementation is mandated by the
W3C. This is exactly Håkon's point: we are making it easier to use a
PDF-like language by mandating the implementation of a PDF-like language.
The "tools for easily creating that content" will presumably appear for
the same reason that tools for creating PDF exist.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

If you spend any time administering Windows NT, you're far too familiar 
with the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) which displays the cause of the 
crash and gives some information about the state of the system when 
it crashed.  -- "Microsoft Developer Network Magazine"


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