We are using Adobe Acrobat in our project (SCOPE). One concern for me is that we
will be restricted to what is possible withing proprietary software. I am far
from being a novice in SGML (I know nothing beyond HTML) but it 'may' offer
greater flexibility and the possiblility to add features in while still being
able to work with all SGML from a previous stage.
I'm not knocking Acrobat. I've fought hard to have it accepted by some people.
But I think that I would now support a more open system if one was developed.
This is a personal view and does not represent the project's views (I've only
been thinking like this since I went to a conference of Friday [Acrobat was not
the subject and didn't get mentioned]).
George Pitcher
Technical Manager
SCOPE Project
Napier University, Edinburgh
[log in to unmask]
_______________________________________________________________________________
Subject: Re: Benefits of SGML, HTML, XML and CSS (was Re: PDF to HTML
From: Mr C A Rusbridge <[log in to unmask]> at internet-gateway
Date: 20/3/97 12:13 PM
> On Wed, 19 Mar 1997, Marie-Laure Bouchet wrote:
> > At a U.K. Serials Group Meeting, I asked a couple of representatives of
> > a publishers what they would do if Adobe were to start charging for
> > Acrobat Viewers. They replied that Adobe wouldn't do it as it would get
> > everyone's backs up.
> > It seems a rather precarious situation to be in, so I presume they are
> > working on something for the long run?
>
> I would be a bit tricky to charge for the PDF viewers that are already in
> use. So Adobe could only charge for new versions of the viewers and these
> would need to have significant functionality enhancement for people to
> want to ditch their existing free browsers. Plus there's the growing
> number of free browsers (xpdf for example).
Adobe started by charging for their viewers (I think), and soon realised
they needed to give them away to promote PDF. This has been a very
successful strategy, parallelling the strange development of giving away
expensive commercial software in the browser world. Personally, I don't
think they will change back to charging for PDF viewers, and indeed the
prices of other PDF-related products seem to be coming down as usage
increases.
--
Chris Rusbridge
Programme Director, Electronic Libraries Programme
The Library, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Phone 01203 524979 Fax 01203 524981
Email [log in to unmask]
Received: from central.napier.ac.uk by ccmailgate.napier.ac.uk (SMTPLINK V2.11.01)
; Thu, 20 Mar 97 12:12:01 gmt
Return-Path: <[log in to unmask]>
Received: from naga.mailbase.ac.uk (naga.mailbase.ac.uk [128.240.226.3]) by central.napier.ac.uk (8.6.10/8.6.10) with ESMTP id MAA15092; Thu, 20 Mar 1997 12:09:37 GMT
Received: by naga.mailbase.ac.uk id <[log in to unmask]>
(8.7.x for naga.mailbase.ac.uk); Thu, 20 Mar 1997 12:05:30 GMT
Received: from lupin.csv.warwick.ac.uk by naga.mailbase.ac.uk id <[log in to unmask]>
(8.7.x for naga.mailbase.ac.uk) with ESMTP; Thu, 20 Mar 1997 12:05:26 GMT
From: Mr C A Rusbridge <[log in to unmask]>
Message-Id: <[log in to unmask]>
Received: by lupin.csv.warwick.ac.uk
id MAA27576; Thu, 20 Mar 1997 12:05:22 GMT
Subject: Re: Benefits of SGML, HTML, XML and CSS (was Re: PDF to HTML conversion
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 12:05:19 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: [log in to unmask] (eLib list)
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> from "Jon Knight" at Mar 19, 97 08:09:33 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-List: [log in to unmask]
X-Unsub: To leave, send text 'leave lis-elib'
to [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: Mr C A Rusbridge <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: [log in to unmask]
Precedence: list
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
