----------------------- Mail item text follows ---------------
To: I1002812--IBMMAIL NFB R&D Committee
FROM: Steve Jacobson - IT Order Proc. Mktg. and Dist.
3M Company - 555-01-03 Phone: (612) 733-9780
St. Paul, MN 55144 FAX: (612) 736-6037
Subject: Roadblocks on the Super Information Highway
It isn't clear to me from the description of the Adobe Portable Document
Format (PDF) whether we are talking about a bit-mapped image of a page
or ASCII with imbeded codes? What exactly is meant by a DOS Viewer?
Since Adobe has made its name in fonts, it could be that PDF contains
font information that can either be stripped out leaving ASCII, or that
could be converted to the generalized markup language that has been
mentioned by Curtis Chong and others. It seems likely that we will see
software that can provide some useful information about document
structure using this form of document coding.
What is accessibility, though. There was a time when some persons
advocated that accessible software must perform all screen updating
through BIOS. With modern screen review software, this isn't as
essential, or even desireable in some cases. PDF may be unuseable, but
we need to know more about it before we reject it completely. It could
also be that it can convey more useful information about document
structure than can plain ASCII.
Regards,
Steve Jacobson
IBMMAIL: USMMMXBL
INTERNET: USMMMXBL@IBMMAIL.COM
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 02 2012 - 01:30:03 PST