Re: What to do when the LaTeX sources are missing, but an XML equivalent was rewritten from scratch ?
On Mon, 19 Nov 2007, Norbert Preining wrote:
> On Mo, 19 Nov 2007, Don Armstrong wrote:
> > If the author uses the pdf, it's the pdf. If the author uses the tex,
>
> Umpf, how do you proof/ensure that the source of a pdf is the pdf? I
> hope you don't trust the "PDF Producer" field and similar?
You can't ensure anything. The most you can do is look at the work and
consider what the most likely method of producing that work is. If the
author claims otherwise, you (and the ftpmasters) have to decide
whether you believe the author or not. [And frankly, if the author is
making PDFs insanely, using their software may not be particularly
useful, either.]
> So, we are settled, I could - just for the sake of discussion - say
> that the sources of all our pdfs are the pdfs itself, just altered
> to mentiond pdftex in ther "PDF Producers" field, but this is just a
> joke.
You'll note that I don't say anything about what you say the source
is. I talk about what the author *uses*. Since you're not the author,
and it's apparently obvious, even to you, that the PDFs came from tex
source, that's what we should assume.
> Don't get me wrong: I agree with you that the source of the pdf is
> the pdf and SHOULD BE included in Debian. But I want to get more
> than that. I want to get the freedom to design.
I'm not sure that I follow you here.
Don Armstrong
--
The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion ... refutes its thesis
far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's labored
effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all
the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting
on it--and is just as likely to succeed.
-- Alex Kozinski in Silveira V Lockyer
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Reply to: