RE: PDF and paper

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of William Loughborough
> Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 1998 12:03 AM
> To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Subject: PDF and paper
>
>
> There has been some contention that certain sites must post documents
> that come to them in the form of printed materials.  It is fairly
> evident that the only people still using mechanical typewriters are the
> detectives on TV cop shows.  I would be surprised if *any* of the print
> materials presented for posting to government web sites weren't at some
> point in its history in the form of bits and bytes, therefor when the
> webmaster is requested to post printed matter she should "just say no"
> and demand the electronic version that preceded the submitted print.
>

Working in libraries with commercially published publications, I have
discovered that, specifically, some journal publishers or resellers don't
have access to a single, manageable stream of electronic source material;
the first point in the production system at which everything is in one
format is when it's on paper.  Admittedly, saying their production process
is chaotic doesn't address what their process should be, or how they might
address accessibility, but that's one situation.

Another is that some commercial publishers are fanatical--if not
completely paranoid--about maintaining consistent visual presentation of
their materials.  It is a branding issue for them.  Again, this is a
mindset that cares about the good of the company more than the good of the
customer, but there it is.

For either or both of these reasons, PDF is the norm in commercial
publishing of electronic journals; HTML, SGML, and other flexible formats
are in the minority.  That's why we have a couple hundred Gigabytes of PDF
on our servers.  We cannot demand the ancestor electronic format because
it simply isn't for sale.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling@ohiolink.edu

Received on Wednesday, 16 September 1998 07:54:36 UTC