2011/11/17 Ross Moore <ross.mo...@mq.edu.au>: > Hello Zdenek, > > On 18/11/2011, at 7:49 AM, Zdenek Wagner wrote: > >>> But a formatting instruction for one program cannot serve as reliable input >>> for another. >>> A heuristic is then needed, to attempt to infer that a programming >>> instruction must have been used, and guess what kind of instruction it might >>> have been. This is not 100% reliable, so is deprecated in modern methods of >>> data storage and document formats. >>> XML based formats use tagging, rather that programming instructions. This is >>> the modern way, which is used extensively for communicating data between >>> different software systems. >>> >> Yes, that's the point. The goal of TeX is nice typographical >> appearance. The goal of XML is easy data exchange. If I want to send >> structured data, I send XML, not PDF. > > These days people want both. > >> >>> ** Phil. >>> >>> TeX's strength is in its superior ability to position characters on the page >>> for maximum visual effect. This is done by producing detailed programming >>> instructions within the content stream of the PDF output. However, this is >>> not enough to meet the needs of formats such as EPUB, non-visual reading >>> software, archival formats, searchability, and other needs. >>> Tagged PDF can be viewed as Adobe's response to address these requirements >>> as an extension of the visual aspects of the PDF format. It is a direction >>> in which TeX can (and surely must) move, to stay relevant within the >>> publishing industry of the future. >>> >>> Hope this helps, >>> Ross >>> >> No, it does not help. Remember that tha last (almost) portable version >> of PDF is 1.2. If you are to open tagged PDF or even PDF with a >> toUnicode map or a colorspace other than RGB or CMYK in Acrobat Reader >> 3, it displays a fatal error and dies. I reported it to Adobe in March >> 2001 and they did nothing. > > What else would you expect? > AR is at version 10 now. > On Linux it is at version 9 now, indeed 9.4.6 is current. > For OS/2 (now eComStation) the latest AR is at version 3 with known bugs not fixed.
> You don't expect TeX formats prior to TeX3 to handle non-ascii > characters, so why would you expect other people's older software > versions to handle documents written for later formats? > >> I even reported another fatal bug in >> January 2001. I sent sample files but nothing happened, Adobe just >> stopped development of Acrobat Reader at buggy version 3 for some >> operating systems. > > Why should they support OSs that have a limited life-time? > Industry moves on. A new computer is very cheap these days, > with software that can do things your older one never could do. > Yes, since that time OS/3 evolved from version 2 through 3, Warp Connesct, 4, 4.5, eComstation 1.0, eComStation 1.1 to eComStation 2.0, yet AR remained and version 3. > By all means keep the old one while it still does useful work, > but you get another to do things that the older cannot handle. > If I compare multitasking of OS/2 on my old Celeron 333 MHz with Linux running on quad core Intel 4.3 Ghz, the winner is still OS/2. If I have a single thread in mind, 4.3 GHz is of course faster but multitasking and multithreading is made much better in OS/2. A few years ago I made a comparison with a long numerical calculation on OS/2 (Celeron 333 MHz) and Windows XP (Intel 250 MHz). The program took 16 hours on OS/2 running Apache server at the same time and 240 hours on Windows running only this program. I am not sure that I find the very same program now but judging form similar programs I would expect 6 hours on quad core 4.3 GHz with Linux. Are you surprised that I am not satisfied with progress in HW and OS? >> Why do you so much rely on Adobe? When exchanging >> structured documents I will always do it in XML and never create >> tagged PDF because ... > > PDF, as a published standard, is not maintained by Adobe itself > these days, yet Adobe continues to provide a free reader, at least > for the visual aspects. That makes documents in PDF viewable by > everyone (who is only interested in the visual aspect). > > It is an ISO standard, which publishers will want to use. > Most of the people who use (La)TeX are academics or others > who need to do a fair amount of publishing, of one kind > or another. > > TeX can be modified to become capable of producing Tagged PDF. > (See the videos of my talks.) > Free software (Poppler) is being developed to handle most aspects > of PDF content, though it hasn't yet progressed enough to support > structure tagging. It's surely on the list of things to do. > Yes, it is good for extraction even on OS/2 (I do not know whether people compiled poppler, but xpdf binaries are available). >> ... I know that some users will be unable to read them >> by Adobe Acrobat Reader. > > Why not? > It is not Adobe Reader that is holding them back. > >> I do not wish to make them dependent on >> ghostscript and similar tools. > > You'll have to give some more details of who you are > referring to her, and why their economic circumstances > require them to have access to XML-transmitted data, > but preclude them from access to other kinds of standard > computing software and devices. > I hope that people, who are aware of structured documents, will be able to use XML. > >> -- >> Zdeněk Wagner >> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/ >> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz > > > Hope this helps, > > Ross > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Ross Moore ross.mo...@mq.edu.au > Mathematics Department office: E7A-419 > Macquarie University tel: +61 (0)2 9850 8955 > Sydney, Australia 2109 fax: +61 (0)2 9850 8114 > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > > > > -------------------------------------------------- > Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex > -- Zdeněk Wagner http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/ http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex