[LINK] Web and ODF documents in PDF?

[Tom Worthington]

Getting acceptance for new document formats from users is difficult. 
If someone gets a file with an ODF or some other extension they have 
never heard of it will be a worry for them. But if they get a PDF 
file that is okay.

Perhaps PDF can be used as Trojan horse (in a nice way) for this. 
Some versions of PDF (such as PDF/UA) have provision for embedding 
data files 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format#Content>. This 
could be used to include a ODF or web document and its associated 
formatting and images inside the PDF document.

OpenOffice.org could be modified to package an editable version of 
documents in a PDF file (and an equivalent addon provided for 
Microsoft Office). OO already  creates PDF versions of documents, so 
to this could be added an option to include a copy of the original 
source document. The person receiving the document would see the PDF 
rendering by default, but would have the option to work on the 
original editable file and be offered a link to download a copy of 
OO, or a conversion tool for Microsoft Office, if needed.

Most of the space taken up by word processing documents is in the 
images, not the text. It should be possible to share the images 
between the PDF rendering and the ODF document. As a result adding 
the ODF document to the PDF may not make the document much bigger.

ODF is better than not having a standard format for office documents, 
but is not perfect. My preference would be to use XHTML 2 for word 
processing documents, so they could be directly rendered by web 
browsers. Word Processing programs are rapidly becoming just a way to 
create not very good web content and it would be better if they 
created well formatted web format documents directly.

Compatibility with existing products is a legitimate concern when 
setting a standard. As an example this was a major consideration in 
the standard for shipping containers, with discussion of what 
adaptors would be needed 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/05/did-shipping-container-change-world.html>.

Standards based on something which has been shown to work are better 
standards. But this does result in some quirks, as an example 
shipping containers are stronger than they need to be (increasing 
costs) due to the need to meet some old European railway standards. 
The cords for some computers are rated to withstand high temperatures 
as the standard they are made to was designed for electric kettles 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_connector#C15_and_C16_connectors>. 
Putting office documents inside PDF files would be a bit like a 
computer cable you could use to boil water, but at least it would work.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml