From Miles.Ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk Fri Oct 11 09:29:19 1996 Received: from oxmail4.ox.ac.uk (oxmail4.ox.ac.uk [163.1.2.33]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id JAA12953; Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:29:12 +0100 Received: from vax.ox.ac.uk by oxmail4 with SMTP (PP); Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:29:03 +0100 Received: from 163.1.85.1 by vax.ox.ac.uk (MX V4.2 VAX) with SMTP; Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:28:12 +0100 X-Sender: MELLIS@vax.ox.ac.uk Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:28:47 +0100 To: kuhn From: Miles.Ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk (Miles Ellis) Subject: Re: (SC22WG20.1654) Personal contribution to ISO/IEC on some problems with WinWord or RTF formats for ISO/IEC electronic document distribution CC: alb@sct.gouv.qc.ca, brannon@isocs.iso.ch, sc18wg9@dkuug.dk, sc22wg20@dkuug.dk I should like to TOTALLY support Markus Kuhn's comments about using pdf (Acrobat) as a means of electronic document transfer. SC22/WG5 moved to all-electronic document distribution and after dabbling with Word-processor based methods in accordance with ISO/IEC policy we rapidly abandoned it for the well-known reasons. We use pdf and PostScript (mainly because some of our members have not yet got round to sorting out their (free) Acrobat readers. pdf is (in my opinion) by far the best, not only for the reasons elucidated by Markus Kuhn, but also because it is more reliable. About 10% of the PostScript files I am sent for distribution contain characters that cause my Apple PostScript printer to reject the file. Presumably other PostScript printers also reject some "PostScript" files. However, without any exceptions, the Adobe Distiller program that I use to convert PostScript to Acrobat has coped with such files perfectly and produced a correct pdf version. At that point my (free) Acrobat Reader program can either print the file, in addition to displaying it, or create a PostScript file that DOES work! I plan to move to only using pdf for document distribution within WG5 as soon as I can persuade all my membership to get appropriate readers. (We do also distribute documents in ASCII, where that is available, but that is for other reasons; it is hardly a document distribution format in the sense of retaining the format of the original document) Miles Ellis Convenor: SC22/WG5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Miles Ellis Director: Educational Technology Resources Centre University of Oxford, 37-41 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JF, ENGLAND Telephone: +44 1865 270528 Fax: +44 1865 270527 Email: Miles.Ellis@etrc.ox.ac.uk WWW: http://www.etrc.ox.ac.uk/Personal/Miles/Miles_Ellis.html