Thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications (not necessarily in that order) by Ben Forta ...
NOTE: This is my personal blog, and the opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
Adobe has a lot to offer in the way of technology that the government can use and the people can benefit from. Yet Adobe is selling its proprietary formats as 'open government'. What?!? Hunh?!?
How are PDF, Flex/Flash, and Office documents open? Why is Adobe encouraging these formats (they splashed the DC area with their technology and formats).
Government data should be supplied only in XML, RSS, JSON, ODF or other open and non-proprietary formats.
Have you ever been told that the data is 'in PDF' only to discover it is images captured as text? Have you ever tried to migrate date out of Office documents? Have you ever been pointed at a Flash RIA site and been told to slurp out the 'open content'?
PDF and Flash are great format/tools in their own right. As presentation tools I've got no problem with them. But when access to government data is tied up in reading them (or Microsoft) it makes visibility into government actions that much more challenging.
Nevertheless, I still prefer simpler formats such as XML, JSON, for the transmission of data. After having efforts where we had to import text data from PDFs, which ended up simply containing images of text, I think you can see why.
How are PDF, Flex/Flash, and Office documents open? Why is Adobe encouraging these formats (they splashed the DC area with their technology and formats).
Government data should be supplied only in XML, RSS, JSON, ODF or other open and non-proprietary formats.
Have you ever been told that the data is 'in PDF' only to discover it is images captured as text? Have you ever tried to migrate date out of Office documents? Have you ever been pointed at a Flash RIA site and been told to slurp out the 'open content'?
PDF and Flash are great format/tools in their own right. As presentation tools I've got no problem with them. But when access to government data is tied up in reading them (or Microsoft) it makes visibility into government actions that much more challenging.
For starters, you do realize that PDF is an ISO standard, right? See http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumb...
Flash Player is not open, you are correct. But the SWF format absolutely is. See http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/
Flex is open source.
Office documents are definitely not open, but they are prevalent, and so the ability to interact with them is critical, like it or not.
--- Ben
Tim
--- Ben
I stand corrected. Here is an Adobe link that adds interesting information:
http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_...
Nevertheless, I still prefer simpler formats such as XML, JSON, for the transmission of data. After having efforts where we had to import text data from PDFs, which ended up simply containing images of text, I think you can see why.
--Daniel Greenfeld