Subject: Re: (SC22WG20.1654) Personal contribution to ISO/IEC on some problems with WinWord or RTF formats for ISO/IEC electronic document distribution

From: [email-masked] (Miles Ellis)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:28:47 +0100

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: [email-masked]
WWW: http://www.etrc.ox.ac.uk/Personal/Miles/Miles_Ellis.html