Hi to all,
If a publisher releases a book (more than 100) under the Free Documentation License, is the physical book considered an opaque copy? I assume yes. Therefore the publisher is obliged to create a public accessible online (transparant) version if there is not a transparent copy contained in the book?
For example: Is O'Reilly obliged to create a cleaned-up (not generated from Docbook like their sample-chapters) html-version the RMS-biography? http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/
Currently, I'm in debate with some professors trying to convince them to release their syllabus under the FDL. But appearantly they are then required to do a lot of extra work creating an online version (which doesn't exist now), a work worsened by the fact that they use Microsoft Word and don't know HTML? Am I seeing this wrong?
Have any of you ever advocated the use of FDL for educational textbooks (not related to software)? Any luck?
These are some relevant excerpts of the FDL: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html "Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only." ... "If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a publicly-accessible computer-network location containing a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material, which the general network-using public has access to download anonymously at no charge using public-standard network protocols. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public."
Wouter Vanden Hove www.worldhistory-poster.com
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 06:49:06AM +0200, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
Currently, I'm in debate with some professors trying to convince them to release their syllabus under the FDL. But appearantly they are then required to do a lot of extra work creating an online version (which doesn't exist now), a work worsened by the fact that they use Microsoft Word and don't know HTML? Am I seeing this wrong?
Microsoft Word format is completely ok as transparent copy. You can use it with many Open Source word processors and other utilities.
Microsoft Word format is completely ok as transparent copy. You can use it with many Open Source word processors and other utilities.
No, no ,NO!
The definition of a transparent copy as in the FDL (not "Yet Another Definition of Transparent Copy"):
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
I do not now if ".doc" specification is available, I doubt it is fully.
But I am sure it connot be edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors (as GNU Emacs, Vi or... say Notepad).
Word format is THE archetype of what is an opaque one, specificly designed to trap users' data.
Guillaume Ponce http://www.guillaumeponce.org/
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:44:22AM +0200, Guillaume Ponce wrote:
Microsoft Word format is completely ok as transparent copy. You can use it with many Open Source word processors and other utilities.
No, no ,NO!
The definition of a transparent copy as in the FDL (not "Yet Another Definition of Transparent Copy"):
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
I do not now if ".doc" specification is available, I doubt it is fully.
IIRC .doc specification is available somewhere. There are obviously some minor incompatibilities between standard and Microsoft implementation, but that's true for every other format.
But I am sure it connot be edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors (as GNU Emacs, Vi or... say Notepad).
Generic text editors doesn't mean *plain text* editors. That would be silly - 99% of population uses WYSYWIG for such things.
You can edit it in OpenOffice, AbiWord, KWord and ton of other *formatted text* editors.
Word format is THE archetype of what is an opaque one, specificly designed to trap users' data.
It's not. It was designed with single program in mind but there's nothing in it that prevents other people from implementing the standard.
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:44:22AM +0200, Guillaume Ponce wrote:
Microsoft Word format is completely ok as transparent copy. You can use it with many Open Source word processors and other utilities.
No, no ,NO!
The definition of a transparent copy as in the FDL (not "Yet Another Definition of Transparent Copy"):
A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".
I do not now if ".doc" specification is available, I doubt it is fully.
IIRC .doc specification is available somewhere. There are obviously some minor incompatibilities between standard and Microsoft implementation, but that's true for every other format.
I'm not sure of that. I have made some search (on msdn.microsoft.com) and found only the RTF specification. Could you provide an url ?
minor incompatibilities ? minor for proprietary software... not for Free Software.
But I am sure it connot be edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors (as GNU Emacs, Vi or... say Notepad).
Generic text editors doesn't mean *plain text* editors. That would be silly - 99% of population uses WYSYWIG for such things.
You can edit it in OpenOffice, AbiWord, KWord and ton of other *formatted text* editors.
Word format is THE archetype of what is an opaque one, specificly designed to trap users' data.
It's not. It was designed with single program in mind but there's nothing in it that prevents other people from implementing the standard.
It's not ? Have you tried to import old word format into current word version or third-party Free Software supporting word format ? I don't agree with you at all regarding the Word file format, It's a an opaque one and for multiple reasons :
- There is some patent owned by Microsoft regarding Office. I think some description could be valable for Word format description. (did you remember the silly trick of Microsoft regarding the CIFS license ?) So we could have a restruction of using the description.
- The format is not described anywhere from a standard place/organization (please provide an url, if you can found one).
- The evolution of the format is linked to one company/product.
- The evolution of the format is linked to proprietary software.
adulau
Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mailman.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 11:28:10AM +0200, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
IIRC .doc specification is available somewhere. There are obviously some minor incompatibilities between standard and Microsoft implementation, but that's true for every other format.
I'm not sure of that. I have made some search (on msdn.microsoft.com) and found only the RTF specification. Could you provide an url ?
minor incompatibilities ? minor for proprietary software... not for Free Software.
Minor incompatibilities happen everywhere. GCC has minor incompatibilities with ANSI standard, Mozilla, MSIE and Konqueror with HTML etc.
It's not. It was designed with single program in mind but there's nothing in it that prevents other people from implementing the standard.
It's not ? Have you tried to import old word format into current word version or third-party Free Software supporting word format ? I don't agree with you at all regarding the Word file format, It's a an opaque one and for multiple reasons :
- There is some patent owned by Microsoft regarding Office. I
think some description could be valable for Word format description. (did you remember the silly trick of Microsoft regarding the CIFS license ?) So we could have a restruction of using the description.
So far they haven't sued creators of any proprietary or Open Source program that uses .doc so even if it's true it's not for the format.
- The format is not described anywhere from a standard
place/organization (please provide an url, if you can found one).
I'm not WYSYWIG guy, why should I know such things. Ask on OpenOffice or other relevant mailing lists.
The evolution of the format is linked to one company/product.
The evolution of the format is linked to proprietary software.
These two point are true in case of majority of formats and has little to do with "trnasparency".
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 12:02:05 +0200 Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
- The format is not described anywhere from a standard
place/organization (please provide an url, if you can found one).
I'm not WYSYWIG guy, why should I know such things. Ask on OpenOffice or other relevant mailing lists.
if you don't know, ask people who know, and THEN come back with an interesting contribution
--- Odile Bénassy entr'ouvert, l'entreprise ouverte - http://www.entrouvert.org mailto: obenassy@entrouvert.org gpg: 6333 33AF 1AA4 5A64 3870 33BC 4247 DC1D BDEB B4AA
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Minor incompatibilities happen everywhere. GCC has minor incompatibilities with ANSI standard, Mozilla, MSIE and Konqueror with HTML etc.
So I wouldn't call any browser-specific HTML transparent, either. Same for compiler-specific C code (if it would be released under FDL; GPL doesn't talk of transparent and opaque formats).
- There is some patent owned by Microsoft regarding Office. I
think some description could be valable for Word format description. (did you remember the silly trick of Microsoft regarding the CIFS license ?) So we could have a restruction of using the description.
So far they haven't sued creators of any proprietary or Open Source program that uses .doc so even if it's true it's not for the format.
That fact that they haven't done so doesn't mean they couldn't in the future. I don't know if they have a patent that restricts independent implementations of the format, but if so, then the format is surely not transparent.
- The format is not described anywhere from a standard
place/organization (please provide an url, if you can found one).
I'm not WYSYWIG guy, why should I know such things.
Well, since you claimed: "IIRC .doc specification is available somewhere.", you might want to back up that claim ...
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 02:35:06PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
There is no "Microsoft Word format", here is a bunch of different formats. Some of them are more or less decoded by free software.
The same can be said about HTML.
HTML standards are available from W3C, so there's nothing to be "decoded". Not so for nonstandard extensions of some browsers (see above).
Frank
On 16 Jul 2002, at 17:19, Frank Heckenbach wrote:
- There is some patent owned by Microsoft regarding Office. I
think some description could be valable for Word format description. (did you remember the silly trick of Microsoft regarding the CIFS license ?) So we could have a restruction of using the description.
So far they haven't sued creators of any proprietary or Open Source program that uses .doc so even if it's true it's not for the format.
That fact that they haven't done so doesn't mean they couldn't in the future. I don't know if they have a patent that restricts independent implementations of the format, but if so, then the format is surely not transparent.
A patent would protect a technique, not a file format. (i.e like LZW compression, not the layout of the GIF file structure). An independent technique for generating the same would not be covered by the patent.
- The format is not described anywhere from a standard
place/organization (please provide an url, if you can found one).
I'm not WYSYWIG guy, why should I know such things.
Well, since you claimed: "IIRC .doc specification is available somewhere.", you might want to back up that claim ...
Instead of bothering to have the above arguement, you could have just fired up a webbrowser and spent a few seconds on google to turn up http://www.wvware.com/.
Imran
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 03:12:45PM +0100, Imran Ghory wrote:
I'm not WYSYWIG guy, why should I know such things.
Well, since you claimed: "IIRC .doc specification is available somewhere.", you might want to back up that claim ...
Instead of bothering to have the above arguement, you could have just fired up a webbrowser and spent a few seconds on google to turn up http://www.wvware.com/.
And two more seconds to find: http://www.wvware.com/wvInfo.html
"The MS Office file formats (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Office Binder and Office Drawing) were all made freely available from the MS msdn website in 1998. Since then they have been removed, but MS made cd's available of their website to developers that registered to receive them. These cd's are commonly available. The particular cd that the specifications were made available on is the July 1998 edition. CD Number 2 of the three part set. The specs that were made available were the office 97 spefications. Not the previous versions. The specs are quite hard to read, and often incomplete. Some fields are wrong, and some information is not fully correct, but theres nothing better available."
Which supports what has been said by some people in this thread: the Word specification is obscure and only partially known; it is far from being a transparent document format.
Jaime
Imran Ghory wrote:
Instead of bothering to have the above arguement, you could have just fired up a webbrowser and spent a few seconds on google to turn up http://www.wvware.com/.
Did that, clicked on the link called "Informations and links" under ressources and found this:
| The MS Office file formats (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Office Binder and | Office Drawing) were all made freely available from the MS msdn | website in 1998.
Sounds good :-)
| Since then they have been removed,
Sounds bad :-(
| but MS made cd's available of their website to developers that | registered to receive them. These cd's are commonly available. | The particular cd that the specifications were made available | on is the July 1998 edition.
So we can only hope that the specs didnt change after that. Can we also be sure of that? Is redistribution of these specs allowed?
| CD Number 2 of the three part set. The specs that were made available | were the office 97 spefications.
So not the Office 2000 specs?
| Not the previous versions. The specs are quite hard to read, and often | incomplete.
Sound bad :-(
| Some fields are wrong, and some information is not fully correct, but | theres nothing better available.
As a result I conclude:
- Actual specs are NOT available - Specs that are available are seemingly not open and outdated - The implementation seems to differ from the specs making them more or less obsolete
So IMHO the MS-Office formats are not transparent but opaque according to the FDL.
Jan Wildeboer
Quote
The MS Office file formats (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Office Binder and Office Drawing) were all made freely available from the MS msdn website in 1998. Since then they have been removed, but MS made cd's available of their website to developers that registered to receive them. These cd's are commonly available. The particular cd that the specifications were made available on is the July 1998 edition. CD Number 2 of the three part set. The specs that were made available were the office 97 spefications. Not the previous versions. The specs are quite hard to read, and often incomplete. Some fields are wrong, and some information is not fully correct, but theres nothing better available.
END-Quote
Sounds like you are both right ;~)
Guillaume Ponce contact@guillaumeponce.org wrote:
I cannot believe that the .doc should be considered transparent whereas PostScript or PDF are cited examples of opaque formats.
Indeed. My conclusion seems to be that doc is neither, therefore is not a transparent format ;-)
MJR
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Generic text editors doesn't mean *plain text* editors. That would be silly - 99% of population uses WYSYWIG for such things.
You can edit it in OpenOffice, AbiWord, KWord and ton of other *formatted text* editors.
And what about that (more than) 1% of the population whose accessibility needs mean that they use, say, Emacspeak - or other /text/ based editors? And those using older PCs which will not happily run a GUI? To them, how open are MS doc formats?
- Richard
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 06:49:06AM +0200, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
Currently, I'm in debate with some professors trying to convince them to release their syllabus under the FDL. But appearantly they are then required to do a lot of extra work creating an online version (which doesn't exist now), a work worsened by the fact that they use Microsoft Word and don't know HTML? Am I seeing this wrong?
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:07:19AM +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Microsoft Word format is completely ok as transparent copy. You can use it with many Open Source word processors and other utilities.
But it has many other problems associated: it is not standard and it is binary, rather than text, which makes it unpactical from the point of view of version control systems.
As the editor of our university's press, I'm also trying to convince my colleagues to release their books with free licenses. I recommend that they release them in any editable format they have it (even the abominable Word format) and once they are free documents we at the university press will translate them into a more standard and convenient format (LaTeX is our current option). I've seen also groups of students working in translating their professor's notes into LaTeX.
The major problem I see preventing professors from releasing their books with free documentation licenses is that the academic establishment do not value non-traditional publications. If a famous editorial company publishes your book, your colleagues give you a lot of credit for it. If you distribute it yourself on the Internet they don't take it seriously. The problem is that most major editors will not publish books with a free license; the authors will have to put some pressure on them. For authors it has a lot of advantages to publish under a free documentation license: they are again free to update and use their own books, which with the current copyright transfer contracts is something they cannot do (I know it from my own experience :-)
Regards, Jaime
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:42:34AM +0100, Jaime E . Villate wrote:
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:07:19AM +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Microsoft Word format is completely ok as transparent copy. You can use it with many Open Source word processors and other utilities.
But it has many other problems associated: it is not standard and it is binary, rather than text, which makes it unpactical from the point of view of version control systems.
It's true that's it's not the best format one can imagine. But I think that if something is already in that format, it's acceptable to keep using it.
On Tue, 2002-07-16 at 11:42, Jaime E . Villate wrote:
As the editor of our university's press, I'm also trying to convince my colleagues to release their books with free licenses. I recommend that they release them in any editable format they have it (even the abominable Word format) and once they are free documents we at the university press will translate them into a more standard and convenient format (LaTeX is our current option). I've seen also groups of students working in translating their professor's notes into LaTeX.
Then use openOffice to translate their .doc files in .sxw files.
openOffice uses a transparent format because the .sxw file is simply a set of XML files (with DTD) zipped. You only need to unzip and edit (with a simple text editor) the files if you want to.
The major problem I see preventing professors from releasing their books with free documentation licenses is that the academic establishment do not value non-traditional publications. If a famous editorial company publishes your book, your colleagues give you a lot of credit for it. If you distribute it yourself on the Internet they don't take it seriously. The problem is that most major editors will not publish books with a free license; the authors will have to put some pressure on them. For authors it has a lot of advantages to publish under a free documentation license: they are again free to update and use their own books, which with the current copyright transfer contracts is something they cannot do (I know it from my own experience :-)
Authors (of music and text) should take back their freedom, it would be really nice to see similar things as FSF(E) for music and texts.
Simo.
Let's come back to Mr Wouter Vanden Hove problem.
Professors might make a plain text copy of their .doc, losing formatting.
The result - a floppy with this file.txt - would certainly be somewhat ugly, but you could just add a notice encouraging any willing reader to start form this universally readable ASCII version and elaborate a new one with LaTeX, Docbook, Texinfo or whatever transparent formating mean he wishes.
The transparency is asked so that te community can work with the distributed document, so just let the community work...
Hoping it helps.
Guillaume Ponce http://www.guillaumeponce.org/