Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Content Format

[Bob Dodd]

--- Mike Warren <address@hidden> wrote:
> Bob Dodd <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Freedom is a philosophical concept, I'm more concerned about the
> > practicalities...
> 
> Then free software is not for you.

Don't get me wrong Mike, I'm passionate about freedom of speech, it's
why I bleat on so much about submission formats. Actually, it's not the
formats as such, but the tools to get you there...

The way I see it, is freedom of speech has two legs. The first leg is
exactly what you (and the FSF) propose, in that information should be
free of copyright restrictions and patents. The second leg is in
providing access to give everyone possible a voice, and for that voice
to have the same access to presentation tools/techniques for their
material as every other contributor. The danger I see is that the
submissions path as you suggest would effecively discriminate against
some contributors.

The proposals for formatted text so far have focussed on formats that
are "more programmer readable" than "human readable", which is
inevitable once you start adding sophistication to the basic
formatting, and that's why contributors need decent front ends to hide
the complexities from them. The tools available for the likes of TEI
and Latex are, generally speaking at least, not available on most
peole's desk tops, and also don't have the look & feel most users are
familiar with. HTML is slightly different, but as has already been
pointed out, Microsoft HTML generators (amongst others) are likely to
embed proprietory fonts, widgets etc. within the generated HTML (which
is almost worse than using a copyrighted, but at least "standard",
document format).

Then you have to look at who the authors are likely to be. I guess this
isn't such a problem for many GNU projects where the contributers tend
to be tecnically literate computer programmers, and with a high
proportion of them having access to a PC where they can install any
software they like. GNE is a bit different. The software side (us)
pretty much fits that standard pattern, and we would have no problem in
using almost any text formatting tool thrown at us. The contributors to
the GNE though, are different...  

If we want to cast our net as widely as possible for contributions (and
if we truly believe in free speech, we should), we are going to get a
much wider and more eclectic mix of people than we do for the software
side of things, all with different levels of PC (in the broadest sense)
skills, and access to machines, but all with useful content to
contribute. So, for some, TEI and Latex (without a nice Word-style
front end at least) will be an indecipherable foreign language; for
others, even though they know of the tools, they may not have the
authority to install and use them (e.g. people whose access to PCs
and/or the internet is via work).

How to support such people, and to be as welcoming as possible to them,
is going to take a great deal of thought (and I suspect effort).
Accepting (and converting) Word submissions is just one one quick and
dirty way of acheiving this, and if we don't want to do it that way,
fine. But if we don't, then we need something else to put in it's place
that doesn't discriminate against those without access to front ends
for latex and TEI. I've not seen any convincing solutions yet...

Mike, I'm sure its not your intention to discriminate against anybody,
I'm not suggesting that for a moment, I just ask that you think more
about the background of the people who may want to participate in GNE.
I really do believe that their profile is rather different to a
conventional GNU project in that they are not necessarily techies or
academics, and that they need more support to help tsubmit articles
than we would, however that is acheived. 

It would be a great shame if by an accident of design, we were to
reduce the potential supply and/or quality of contributions to GNE. 

/Bob Dodd



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