Re: Is tabular data in binary format acceptable for Debian ?
On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 07:07:38PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > Perhaps it would be a reasonable compromise if README.Source would
> > mention a short command line which converts the data into text form?
>
> this time, I disagree with you: all the above is a lot of work that I am not
> willing to do. A user of the R software is able to do this conversion by
> himself, so I do not see what is the added value here.
Well, my compromise suggestion was intended to be a fallback if
ftpmaster insists on the rejection. Perhaps just nobody cared about the
issue and that's the reason for the silence. The conversion to text
has no added value than the proof that the data are simply to get -
much simpler than any .odt or .xls form which would *really* make a
lot of work.
> And I think that the ???the preferred form of the work??? is a very unfortunate
> wording. Some people prefer bananas, and others apples. As long as there is no
> information loss, why not simply accept the R binary format,
I understood Ben's wording exactly this way that the R format actually
*is* the prefered format for an R related package - so Ben (and me) are
agreeinig with you that the source format is fine.
> which can be read,
> written, modified and converted with R? The method that the current upstream
> developer prefers is not necessarly the same as the one others would prefer.
IMHO the format which is used by the tool which handles the format is
quite natural and thus any reasonable person would assume that it is
prefered by most users, right?
> What matters is that the material in the sources provides the essential
> freedoms to use, study, modify and distribute, and I argue that the R binary
> objects do, as much as a txt.gz, a .xls or a .ods file would.
At least I was objecting .xls or .ods (strongly) and agree with the
binary R format inside the source while making a suggestion how to
obtain a text form easily *in* *case* ftpmaster disagrees.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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