Re: Results for Debian's Position on the GFDL
"Raul Miller" <moth.debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/21/06, Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> > > Second off, you've not convinced me that the GFDL never allows
> > > the use of word format (I'll grant that such allowance would come
> > > with caveats about as strong as those necessary for your
> > > example).
> >
> > I don't quite understand what you are saying here. Could you
> > enumerate those caveats?
>
> No, there's too many potential cases for me to enumerate all
> potential caveats.
>
> I can give you a simple example, however, of a case where
> [with caveats] word format is suitable: some drawings could
> be saved in some word format if the version of word in question is
> widely available,
Why does it matter whether the version of word is widely available?
> and if there is a command line program that
> will convert those drawings to postscript.
The ability to convert the drawing to postscript (which will probably
be lossy) does not affect whether the original word format is
"Transparent".
> Another example where word format is ok to distribute
> involves a simple word->xml->word translation facility
> where both the word format and the xml format are
> distributed.
If you are distributing both, then the XML file is Transparent and the
word file is opaque. My point was that the word file is never
Transparent. I am not saying that the word file can not be
distributed, but that it is never Transparent.
> As an aside, I seem to remember a number of programs which
> can deal with word format to varying degrees (three that come
> to mind are catdoc (GPL), mswordview (GPL/LGPL) and openoffice
> (PDL/LGPL), but I'm sure there are others).
Only the last one can edit the file. The other two are lossy
converters. And openoffice is definitely not a "generic text editor".
Cheers,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu
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