Re: postscript vs PDF, Call for Community Feedback: Retiring IETF FTP Service

[Larry Masinter <[e-mail]>]

I don't know about the old PDFs of RFCs scanned from paper, but at least
the ones being generated now are not just "PDF" but "PDF/A" (at least
that's what RFC 7995 called for).

*PDF/A* is an ISO
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization>-standardized
version of the Portable Document Format
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format> (PDF) specialized
for use in the archiving <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive> and
long-term preservation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_preservation>
 of electronic documents <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_document>.
PDF/A differs from PDF by prohibiting features unsuitable for long-term
archiving, such as font <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font> linking (as
opposed to font embedding <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_embedding>)
and encryption.[1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A#cite_note-nutshell-2-1-1> The ISO
requirements for PDF/A file viewers
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_viewer> include color management
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_management> guidelines, support for
embedded fonts, and a user interface for reading embedded annotations
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annotation>.

Of course, you can declare anything to be there for "the long term" and
lose because of disuse, but the widespread adoption of PDF/A as a long term
archival format increases the likelihood of interpretability.

On the other hand, there is no SVG/A (the analog of PDF/A but for SVG. This
means that the likelihood that, say, 50 years from now, you won't be able
to find a compatible renderer for IETF based RFCs in HTML+SVG is (IMO)
greater.

I'm a fan of preserving software through emulation (engaged in preserving
some old software from the 80s) but I think to be careful it might be
important to archive the Tools implementations of various versions of the
RFC XML formatted. Also when regenerating the text, PDF, HTML derived
forms, being careful to archive the previous renditions (as a safety
measure).
-- 
https://LarryMasinter.net  https://interlisp.org