Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1993 10:22:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Rob Raisch, The Internet Company" <raisch@internet.com>
Subject: Re: Adding ISSNs.
To: "William A. Weems" <wweems@oac3.hsc.uth.tmc.edu>
In-Reply-To: <9310201429.ZM17933@oac3.hsc.uth.tmc.edu>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.03.9310211027.E8247-b100000@hmmm.internet.com>
On Wed, 20 Oct 1993, William A. Weems wrote:
> Relative to this issue, Rob Raisch wrote:
>
> <Food for thought: Assume a document in ASCII and the same document in
> <Postscript. Do they contain the same "intellectual content?" What metric
> <do we, (wearing our publisher hats), use to decide?
>
> <Consider the following example. Is there a difference in "intellectual
> <content" in these two sentences?
>
> <Sentence one: The hammer hit the nail with enough force to shatter the wood.
>
> <Sentence two: The hammer hit the nail with enough force to
> < <ITALIC>shatter</ITALIC> the wood.
>
>
> Operationally, a responsible publisher/archivist would not convert sentence one
> into sentence two when say moving from ASCII to Postscript or HTML. They might,
> for example use <ITALIC> to make the title of the article in an abstract stand
> out from the authors and journal reference when they go from an ASCII to an HTML
> version. This would not change content.
It was more in my mind that the file be converted from a richer
format to plain ascii text. Not the other way round. There is a strong
incentive to move product from a richer, more expressive format to plain
ascii text for the simple reason that *most* Internauts have only tty
emulations, not multi-MIP, mega-PEL workstations.
I would suggest that moving anything from a more expressive format
to plain ascii will change the "intellectual content."
</rr>