Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

> if what you can take with you (inc. cache and use later) is only a snapshot of one particular state of that content
>then the content itself cannot thereby be considered portable
>
And here is where we disagree,  Bill.   The ability to capture/snapshot one particular state is what people do with PDF today (and have been doing for 20+ years).

Leonard

From: Bill McCoy
Date: Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 2:59 PM
To: Deborah Kaplan
Cc: Bill McCoy, Ivan Herman, Leonard Rosenthol, W3C Digital Publishing IG, Liam Quin, Ralph Swick, Olaf Drümmer
Subject: Re: [Glossary] Definition of a portable document (and other things...)

Deborah, I like your definition, it is not only simpler but also uses logical composition (that "any aggregate whose content is portable is itself portable") . I don't like "display" but that's a fine point.

To try to make this yet even simpler, it's been said that "you can't take it with you!". To me the essence of portability is that "you can take it with you!".  And the "it" means the content that we are calling portable... if what you can take with you (inc. cache and use later) is only a snapshot of one particular state of that content then the content itself cannot thereby be considered portable.

--Bill

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 11:51 AM, Deborah Kaplan <dkaplan@safaribooksonline.com<mailto:dkaplan@safaribooksonline.com>> wrote:
This is an attempt to simplify the conversation, moving away from specific examples and technical terminology. If it just adds complexity, let's pretend I didn't say anything. My basic summary as I think that Ivan's earlier definition of "portable" is just fine. ;)

A Web Document consists of:

1. Content, that is
2. Encoded in some format

"Content" might mean text, captions, a video, a visualization, data, math,  musical notation, the smell of cloves in a mug of cider on a winter morning.

"Encoding format" might mean PDF, plaintext, HTML5, Epub, SubRip, AVIs, OGGs, Flash, WMV, MathML, LaTeX, Sibelius, FragrenceML, etc.

Certain elements of a web document sit on a wobbly line between "content" and "encoding format," such as fonts.

When a web document is *portable*, that means that the object being described as portable:

* Given a toolset which can render all the encoding formats,
* But in the absence of any other web resources
* Can display its all of its essential content.

This is still wobbly, to be sure. For example, as Leonard has been pointing out, caching is a thing. But I think -- staying away from the discussions of specific technological caching solutions, which are relevant to defining "portability," --  a web document which contains enough of its  remote content cached to be displayed in the absence of other web resources is portable *only with that cache*. That is to say, the "portable web document" is the web document + cache. A web document that has the potential to be cached but has *not* been is not portable; it has non-portable dependencies.

But I think that this should resolve the questions of leaving it to open-ended or too specific. Because we are not addressing specific technologies, we can just say that any aggregate whose content is portable is itself portable.

(Again, if this adds more confusion, let's pretend I didn't say anything. I'm trying to synthesize, not add more chaos. I did enough of that in the other thread.)

Deborah



--

Bill McCoy
Executive Director
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
email: bmccoy@idpf.org<mailto:bmccoy@idpf.org>
mobile: +1 206 353 0233