[CREATE] OpenRaster vs. FXG? :)

[Hubert Figuiere]

On 05/13/2009 02:01 PM, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Hubert Figuiere<hub at figuiere.net>  wrote:
>
>> Reading archived file is not interchange.
>>
>
> Nor is having the file format documentation a solution for long term
> archiving.

The problem is that as soon as you offer the possibility to use it as a 
storage format, it becomes archive. Most users don't know about file 
format. Most of them do not care either.

Think about an author doing writing a draft on a piece of paper. Or a 
painter doing sketches on a napkin or anything. This is called legacy.

The same applies. If an artist do some sketches in, say, Photoshop, and 
save them as PSD, then according to your reasoning they should be lost.

As for the documentation, it is just one step of the solution. Ideally 
there would be a reference implementation for that file format, but at 
least a proper documentation, and with some chance, the FLOSS community 
will implement it, to fit their need, as the second step.

>
> As Project Leader for ISO 19005 (PDF/A), I've spent a LOT of time with
> archivists, librarians and the like to understand what makes for "good
> archiving" and "bad archiving" - and it's a quite complex set of factors.
>   This is why there was the need to create a "subset" of PDF for this
> specific purpose - and not just for the file format BUT ALSO a defined set
> of "conforming reader" requirements for viewers of the content.
>
> Documents - both the physical and the digital - need to be prepared for long
> term archiving (whatever your definition of "long term" is).  Assuming that
> any arbitrary asset can be stored away for 100's of years is not correct -
> only with proper preparation.

That's where FLOSS is making that preparation. By providing software 
whose lifecycle is so much longer than proprietary one, because its 
licensing allow it to be integrated into the commons [1] and therefor to 
insure perenity.


Hub

[1] this is just the notion of a common knowledge, a bit like culture, 
science, etc.