[ncc-services-wg] Pre-PDP discussion: "All RIPE documents should be plain text"

* Richard Hartmann

> The various TeX flavors can generate PDF/A. I understand that this
> would add complexity for people who need to create PDFs. Which may be
> a benefit overall as this would result in a stronger incentive to use
> plain text. All this while still allowing easily diffed collaboration
> on text files in all cases.

In this case, the TeX format should be the authoritative one, not PDF.
(You can convert HTML to PDF, too.) It's been a while since I wrote
anything in TeX, but IIRC it's rather forbidding for someone who's never
seen it before. HTML is more approachable.

But, never mind about that, if we do it Sander's way and define my
preferences as non-specific requirements instead:

- For documents that are all text, plaintext is preferred
- For documents that are not all text or cannot be easily be
  represented in plaintext, the alternate format should be chosen based
  on the following criteria:
  - It should be open and platform-independent
  - It should easy for a complete beginner to understand and modify
  - It should keep any text parts of the document as similar to
    plaintext as possible (to allow for easy diffing and collaboration)
  - It should be easy to convert into other formats

> Even then, fonts may get lost over time; that will not happen with
> PDF/A which embeds all fonts.

I don't see any problems with fonts changing. Plaintext doesn't have any
concept of fonts either...

-- 
Tore Anderson