On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Frank Ellermann <hmdmhdfmhdjmzdtjmzdtzktdkztdjz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > While I hate all incarnations of "Proprietary Data Format" it would be > nice to transform the about ten PS RFCs to PDF/A, and then drop the odd > idea that everybody is interested to install "ghostscript" on their box > in 2011: I'm not more interested to do this, PDF/A will do for _this_ > purpose (= sustain the few PS RFCs for the next 50 years.) If there are on the order of 10 RFCs in postscript (or some other format that can easily be converted to PDF/A), then yes, I think shifting those over sounds like a good way to reduce format explosion. My suggestion for PDF/A is largely predicated on optimization: As far as I know, 100% of current authoring programs can output to PDF/A (perhaps with an intermediate step), and many if not all devices that are being used to consume non-RFC IETF content can display PDF/A. > > For simple IETF slide shows I'd still prefer formats suited for limited > bandwidth plans. File size is a valid concern, especially for people with per-MB plans or with small pipes. Of the 10 random IETF powerpoint presentations that I converted to PDF/A using LibreOffice, file size ranged from 36K to 189K. Interestingly, while the largest powerpoint (189K) was exported as the largest PDF (3MB), a 110K powerpoint file shrank down to 42K when turned into a PDF. A cursory glance seemed to indicate reasonable fidelity of the exported files to the originals. > PDF/A is an unrelated goal, e.g., I don't care about > the monospaced font details as long as it is monospaced and can handle > the simple i18n examples in IRIbis or EAI presentations. > Given the nature of presentation formats, conversion to plain text will lose a lot of information. Conversion to some flavor of HTML seems like the most likely route, but may display somewhat differently on different systems. I don't know of any comparison tests converting powerpoint/impress files to PDF and HTML, and seeing how faithful the exports are to the original. In my experience, HTML export from MS-Office, LibreOffice, and LaTeX have all worked passably well. Even though PDF support is so pervasive, I agree that it's suboptimal to transfer a 3MB file that's 16 times larger than the input. That being said, as long as file sizes are all under, say, 8MB, the benefits of easy interoperability will probably outweigh the onus of added file size for most consumers. --R _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf