Advocating the Open Publication License easier?

[Wim De Smet]

Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:

>Op vr 19-07-2002, om 09:57 schreef Guillaume Ponce:
>    > And could please download and install OpenOffice.
>    > And could please load your Word-file into Openoffice and save that in an
>    > open and transparant format.
>    
>    That is not required.  If all you want is just meet the requirements, plain
>    ASCII is perfectly suitable. Even MS Word can save as plain text.  You lose the
>    formating but you can distribute opaque copies (word.doc) printed with the
>    formatting and have the transparent ugly plain text somewhere in the ftp
>    repository, or just on a floppy distributed with the printed copy (of course, it
>    is worth a charge, and the FDL allows you to ask for this charge).
>    
>In the FDL: 
>"...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"
>
>If you save a World-file as ascii, then how does an integral from 1 to
>infinity look like? Word does contain an equation editor, doesn't it ? I
>have some courses with a lot of equations, which certainly don't look
>like TeX,everything points in the direction of Word-made.
>
>Saving that file as ascii, you not only loose the formatting, but
>probably a substantial part of the CONTENT as well. And what about all
>the graphics? 
>
><snip>
>
And so the problem remains. You can try to use openoffice to convert the 
document,
but chances are it won't recognize the extensions in the doc format that 
the equation
editor uses. End result: the professors will have to be convinced to 
write their courses
using another format or a student (or a group of students) will have to 
do it themselves
and verify the entire copy manually. Needless to say that would be a lot 
of work (almost like
writing the damn thing yourself)

my 2 cents,
Wim