On 1 Apr 2010 at 21:19, Daniel Wolf wrote: > On Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:00:12 +0300, <finale-requ...@shsu.edu> wrote: > > > The only electronic format that makes any sense to me is PDF, since > > it's portable and reliable. I can't fathom why any institution would > > require a proprietary format. > > PDF, or specifically, the Adobe PDF implementation, was only released > from its proprietary status on July 1, 2008.
Word DOC format is still proprietary. The DOCX format is theoretically open, but practically speaking, proprietary as well. > AT&T's DjVu is, and has always been, an open format, and in many image > rich files, may be superior to PDF for its impressive compression. Well, it really depends on what is being desired. NYU seems to be requesting electronic submissing as a preliminary step, *before* the dissertation is completed. This seems to replace the paper copy that was always reviewed by the powers that be for the proper fonts and margins and so forth before final submission. UMI has been distributing as PDF for quite some time, though the PDFs I've seen were huge files that were just images from scanning the dissertation in question (in this case, the dissertation could easily have been submitted in electronic format, not as scans, since it was submitted only a few years ago). > In the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering, the > TeX-generated DVI file is a defacto publishing standard, TeX is free > and open source software and although under copyright, its author, > Donald Knuth considers it to be in the public domain. While it is > possible to generate PDF output directly from a DVI file, a DVI file > is an excellent stand-alone format. The TeX package is particularly > well-suited to desktop publishing in maths and other fields using > extensive formulae; I suspect that it would be equally well-suited to > texts in musicology or music theory, but am not aware of anyone not > coming directly from a day job in the sciences or in the narrow field > of academic computer music who has published on a musical topic with > TeX. Does anyone know of any publishing integrating Finale output in > a TeX document, for example? TeX is a really old-fashioned way of producing a printed document. It's like computer programming, you write the code and then you compile it. Perhaps there are WYSIWYG editors that produce TeX output, but that seems antithetical to the tradition out of which the whole thing springs. If the choice is between PDF and Word, the clear winner is PDF, don't you think? -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
