RE: PDF's usefulness to the semantic web

If PDF is expressly referenced, so too should Adobe's Mars Project --
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/mars/ -- as well as XFDL --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Forms_Description_Language -- and
XPS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Paper_Specification 

 

Owen Ambur

Co-Chair Emeritus,  <http://xml.gov/index.asp> xmlCoP  

Co-Chair, AIIM  <http://xml.gov/stratml/index.htm> StratML Committee

Member, AIIM  <http://www.aiim.org/Standards/article.aspx?ID=29284> iECM
Committee 

Invited Expert, W3C  <http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/IG/> eGov IG

Communications/Membership Director,  <http://firmcouncil.org/id5.html> FIRM
Board  

Former Project Manager,  <http://et.gov/> ET.gov 

 <http://ambur.net/bio.htm> Brief Bio 

 

 

 

From: public-egov-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Bobby Caudill
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 10:11 AM
To: public-egov-ig@w3.org
Subject: PDF's usefulness to the semantic web

 


Calling out PDF specifically here should be reconsidered. 

>From a semantic web perspective, PDF is more useful than many other
formats, including graphics, imagery, audio and video, all of which are very
useful formats for government to consider when becoming transparent. Given
that documents are machine readable as well as human readable, technologies
do exist today that are capable of extracting an ontology, making the
information more useful to the semantic web.

In addition, there simply are times when a secure container is required for
publishing information. While typical internet technologies, such as
outlined above, are very good for sharing and transparency, they are not
necessarily always appropriate for information types that require assurances
of authenticity, privacy, authoritativeness, etc.

Further, is the requirement to archive PSI. Again, with consideration that
many government processes are document based, PDF/a (ISO 19005-1:2005)
provides a standards based approach to ensuring the long term preservation
of government information. PDF/a based documents are both machine readable,
making them searchable, discoverable and available to the same technologies
as an ISO 3200 PDF to extract ontologies. Likewise, the standard's based
nature of PDF/a ensures the ability to allow human access to the documents
into the future.

I am concerned that this paper is limiting it's focus and not taking into
consideration the wider view of government processes, many of which depend
upon more traditional document formats for legitimate business reasons.

Thank you for the consideration.

Bobby Caudill




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bobby Caudill
Solution Architect, Global Government Solutions
Adobe Systems Incorporated
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