On 7 Aug 1998, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > However, I do not think that standards documents (and > possibly other categories [personal opinions come to mind]) benefit > from being modifiable. In fact, making a modifiable document a > standard undermines the validity and acceptance of the standard, > since one never knows what one is agreeing to. > > Other issues of concern: Translations, and re-ormatting into a > a different presentation format or conversion into a different > encoding (for some documents the layout and presentation maybe very > important).
Indeed. Rendering into a GIF. Rendering into a hi-res TIFF then printing. These are definitely derived works (although in some sense the underlying information has been copied verbatim). > > If we are looking to reuse the DFSG, I think items 1 (Free > Redistribution) and 4-9 are perfectly fine; I even think that 2 > (asking for source code -- preffered form of the document for > modification) is OK. > Indeed. 2 is perhaps 'less' important in the case of documentation, but still valid, I feel. > The problem lies with Derived works. (Would I like a derived > work of the ANSI C Standard? Sounds like what MS does) > No problem. As long as they call it the 'MS C Standard' (with a footnote to the effect that it is derived from the ANSI C Standard). Of course, you can't modify a standard. That would make the noun 'standard' meaningless. However, I do feel that it is reasonable to want to modify the sgml document which renders to a standard. For example, I take the HTML 4 standard, incorporate in some new features, and title the resulting document 'HTML 5? A proposal by Jules Bean'. This seems to me to be a reasonable (hypothetical) action on my part, and one I would defend my right for. If I cannot do this, then I am doomed to follow whatever the standards body decides. If I can do this, I can show people my opinions, and let them decide. And then, six months down the line, either everyone is now using 'JMLBHTML' (ha!), or they have simply ignored by badly-thought out standard, and have returned to the fold of W3C. I must admit that I don't feel *very* strongly about this. But, on balance, I think there is a case to be made for modifiable documents. Jules /----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd | | Jules aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TW9 2TF *UK* | +----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
