[Xiph-Advocacy] Hi Ivo, some questions to join

Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves justivo at gmail.com
Thu Feb 21 20:13:20 PST 2008


On 2/22/08, JorSol <jorsol at jorsol.tk> wrote:
> (since in Spanish there is no ambiguity for free which means "libre" :-)

"Livre" here.  We have no ambiguity, either.

> but since you don't even mention it on SOM I'm not
> clear about the status of it...

It's not like I have been appointed as the authority to label which
formats are free or not, but since the iCommons Summit of last year, I
stopped mentioning PDF altogether in SOM[1].  Why?  I heard some parts
of PDF are not completely open, like forms, or recent additions like
video/audio embeding[2].  Truth be told, I have not yet looked into
the issue, because there were so many other things more important to
look at and PDF doesn't really need to be promoted.  Should it be
advocated?  Well, my earlier presentations in SOM stated "for sharing
documents that don't need to be edited, use PDF".  If it's free or
open, though, I'm sure... for now.  Someone may clear out the issue
after reading this, but if nobody does, I'll research the matter ASAP.

> I really believe that PDF must be supported since is an ISO standard and
> can be implemented in free software.

Be careful.  Just because something is an ISO standard, doesn't mean
it can be implemented legally everywhere in free software.

-Ivo

[1] By not mentioning it, I mean it's not labeled either as "good" or "bad".
[2] which, by the way, does not seem to support any free video or
audio format like, say, Vorbis


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