Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] (1)(f) and (1)(g) -- audience and working language

["Sam Johnston" <samj@samj.net>]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Shawn <sgrover@open2space.com> wrote:

Dave Pawson wrote:

On presentation:
Touching on the points raised before about presentation, I think that in the
dawning age of the semantic Web 3.0 (there, after resisting for so long I've
finally said it), where data takes precedence over form, I believe our
interop efforts should if anything sacrifice 'pixel perfect' rendering for
data integrity if necessary.

-1, since an end subjective user assessment is key IMHO.
Pixel perfect is nearly impossible, agreed, but presentation has been proposed
as important and I agree. If we can't define it, scope it and explain
how to test it
then it gets deferred. Until then I'd like to see it remain.

Not sure if this is pertinent right this moment but.....

Most of the presentation problems I have seen when viewing document A on computers A and B have been font issues.  Granted I notice this MUCH more with MS Office docs on a Linux system with Open Office.  Often the needed fonts are not found, so the system defaults get used, and these are often slightly different in sizes.  Resulting in paragraphs, headings, etc, being different sizes.  I've seen the same issue with ODF documents opened on different boxes that had different default fonts installed.  (more usually where a specific font was chosen on the original system..)

My question is how do we address the "interoperability" issue with regards to presentation, if we cannot guarantee the same fonts will be available.  Do we make that a condition of testing - all tested platforms have the testing font available?  But does that become a meaningless test for an end user who encounters this but is not aware of the issue?  After all the document will look different, so the "interoperability" test will be a failure for that user.  (as a tech/developer, I see obvious answers here - i.e. install the font.  But to the general public/end user, this may not be so obvious.)

My apologies if this is off track right now.  But the idea occurred to me with the discussion of presentation, and I wanted to get it expressed before I forgot about it.

With the availability of free fonts this may be something that could be locked down in an archiving (ODF/A) profile. Anyway like you I just wanted to get my ideas on the table, so having led us up the garden path I'll try to refocus things now.

Sam