Re: Results for Debian's Position on the GFDL
On 3/26/06, Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> > 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?
I'm not sure why you're asking this. Have you read the
GFDL? If not, try searching for the string "widely available".
If you were familiar with that part of the GFDL (it's the section
on transparent formats), could you elaborate on what you're
asking about?
> > 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".
That's an interesting assertion. But I'm not sure why I should
believe your assertion. Perhaps you could elaborate?
> > 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.
That would depend on what kind of content is in the word file,
wouldn't it?
> > 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".
I was addressing a different aspect of the GFDL's transparent
format issue -- the part that says
...represented in a format whose specification is available to the
general public...
While I've not cared enough about this issue to study the format,
there are some indications that a specification of the format
for some word documents either is available to the public, or could
be made available to the public.
Worst case, you could read the open office source code to figure
out how [some of] these documents are stored.
--
Raul
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