Re: pdf and the semantic web

Hi Alex --

There are programs other than Acrobat that read and display pdf.

xpdf on Linux is one such.  It's probably open source, so that one could get
some tagging hooks into it.

Hope this helps.

                                       -- Adrian

Internet Business Logic
A Wiki and SOA Endpoint for Executable Open Vocabulary English over SQL and
RDF
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com    Shared use is free

Adrian Walker
Reengineering

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Alexander Garcia Castro <
alexgarciac@gmail.com> wrote:

> I would like to know how applicable could the PDF format be within the
> context of the Semantic web? The PDF format is closed; annotating PDFs, as
> in tagging not the file but the information within the file, is not possible
> by means different from those provided by ADOBE. For instance, if I wanted
> to tag a word, or an image within, inside, a PDF I would have to do it with
> my acrobat reader -the latest version; But if I wanted to facilitate such
> operation via WEB I could only do it if and only if I had the XSLT so I
> could transform the PDF into XML. This limitation is, IMHO, a huge one
> within the context of the semantic web where we should be able to define
> links and use them. Furthermore, being forced to have a third party
> application just for displaying a file that should be displayed directly by
> the browser is not a nice feature. If PDF was open it could be rendered by
> the browser.  Aren't closed formats such as PDF viable within the context of
> the SW? After all the PDF was a solution within the context of portability
> and exchange of information; the main problem it was solving was a simple
> one "I want my document to look on display and once printed,  the same
> everywhere" and "I want people to be able to read my documents without
> loosing the format of the document and without having to consider the OS".
> Isn't the PDF obsolete within this context?
>
> --
> Alexander Garcia
> http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/75943.html
>