[ckan-discuss] PDF to replace RDF as primary format for data.southampton

Fri Apr 1 10:37:36 BST 2011

It's a widely accepted format. There's no real tools available for 
authoring anything else and it's the de-facto standard for research 
communication.

It was that or Word Documents, and PDF is far superior.

Tim McNamara wrote:
> On 1 April 2011 19:51, Christopher Gutteridge <cjg at ecs.soton.ac.uk 
> <mailto:cjg at ecs.soton.ac.uk>> wrote:
>
>     Due to the flak we got over my comments about PDF last week, we've
>     been forced to re-evaluate it.
>
>     We've made the difficult decision that RDF will no longer be the
>     preferred format for information interchange on our data site.
>     Full details about the decision here:
>     http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/data/2011/04/01/pdf-selected-as-interchange-format/
>
>
> This is a real shame. PDF is a presentation format for documents, not 
> a format for the interchange of data. I don't understand how PDF can 
> be said to facilitate "exchanging data"[1]. 
>
> Your blog post makes two arguments: PDF is useful to "maintain the 
> layout of complex data sets in the browser on the desktop, and via 
> printed hard copy."  However, neither of those advantages have any 
> bearing on the ability for machines to consume the data. PDF  ruins 
> the ability for a parser maintain the data structure's because PDF 
> text is completely unstructured. Additionally, may I ask why the 
> ability to generate paper copies is relevant?
>
> If you wish for people to be able to visualise data, then by all means 
> provide information via a presentation format. However, your own 
> website[2] says that "If we make the data available in a structured 
> way with a license which allows reuse 
> <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/> then 
> our members, or anyone else, can build tools on top of it without 
> needless bureaucracy. That's common sense." If you publish data as 
> PDF, e.g. remove all structure, you make it impossible to build tools 
> with those data.
>
> I'm confused why data.southampton would like to subvert its own cause.
>
> Tim McNamara
>
>
> [1] para 
> 3 http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/data/2011/04/01/pdf-selected-as-interchange-format/
> [2] http://data.southampton.ac.uk <http://data.southampton.ac.uk/>

-- 
Christopher Gutteridge -- http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/1248

You should read the ECS Web Team blog: http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/webteam/

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