Branden Robinson said: > On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 03:52:20PM -0500, Joe Moore wrote: >> What sort of transformations are permitted? > > I'd say any form of lossless encoding that doesn't require a key to > recover, or with which the key is provided. > > This definition has a few advantages: > * It's technology-neutral. cpio vs. tar, gzip vs. bzip, WAVE vs. PCM > (for audio files), who cares? > * "Lossless" is important; it means you can recover the original data > stream. > * Encryption is fine (it might be wise, necessary, or even unavoidable > depending on the distribution channel), but it is the distributor's > responsibility to ensure that the recipient gets the decryption key.
Is indent(1) lossless? Should it be considered a transformation? It is certainly a trivial "modified work". The tr example (tr A-Z a-z source.c > newsource.c) is irreversible (lossy), but (assuming the source names don't collide under this transformation) produces the same binary, and is (probably) just as readable/editable as the original. (MyVariable -> myvariable) --Joe
