Hi Richard,
I am taking our pdfreaders list back into CC, I hope thats ok (list is not public).
On 22.01.2012 16:03, Richard Stallman wrote:
Well, the problem is, that AFAICT there isn't /the/ version that is supported by Free Readers. The Free Readers try to handle most versions as well as they can, but don't support any relevant version fully. Recommending only a subset of the ISO (and Open) Standard, would make it a) confusing; and b) look like Free Software is inferior.Those are valid points, but at the same time we should not steer people wrong at the practical level.
Definitely not.
Of the various versions of PDF that have names or numbers to identify them, which one comes closest to being fully supported by the latest version of evince? I am told that evince has advanced a lot.
Well from my understanding its all about poppler, the library behind evince, okular, xpdf et cetera. And from what I remember when talking with some of the devs is that it might never reach compliance with ISO 32000 (PDF 1.7).
I am not sure whether poppler supports any of the older versions completely, and since they are not very common, I would rather advertise 90% compliance with PDF 1.7 than 99% compliance with PDF 1.2.
In fact, I think we could remove the part about "You might want to promote the versions" completely and move information about that to the page that has the technical details about the different versions.I think that is a good idea.
Which leads to another idea. I think we could use three different pages;
- A page that says "Here's how to inwtall a free PDF reader." This
is what people should link to when they link to a PDF file. I think that should be the main page of the pdfreaders.org site.
Thats the way it is right now, see http://pdfreaders.org
- A page that argues for linking to pdfreaders.org instead
of to Acroread. This is addressed to people making links to PDF files.
Thats what we are doing as part of the campaign site at fsfe.org: http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html Also we have the banners for our site at: http://pdfreaders.org/graphics.de.html
We did this seperation, because we wanted pdfreaders.org itself to be less of a campaign site and more static.
- A page that talks about what PDF versions you should use in making
documents.This is addressed to people making PDF files.
This is what we have at our "Open Standards" page on pdfreaders.org, but it could be improved with the more details and the information we talked about previously (which parts are actually supported to what degree).
They need to be different because they are addressed to different audiences. If we try to make one page serve two of these goals, it will not do both jobs as well as they could be done. This campaign is important, so it should have a the best possible page for each purpose.
I agree. Especially for 1. we have some major mid-term overhaul ideas, but maybe we should focus on doing the little changes now, so that you can integrate pdfreaders.org into your campaign.
With all the time that has gone by since I looked at the site, I don't remember which of these pages you already have, or which of these goals was the goal of the page we are now discussing. Please forgive my bad memory.
No problem, just have a look at the pages that I referenced above, and tell me what you think needs working on. I will try to setup a wiki page in the fsfe wiki with the changes we agree(d) upon, so that we can start implementing them soon.
Well from my understanding its all about poppler, the library behind evince, okular, xpdf et cetera. And from what I remember when talking with some of the devs is that it might never reach compliance with ISO 32000 (PDF 1.7).
That is surprising. We might learn more about the best way to handle this if we understood why they think so. I'd expect them to be strongly motivated to push from 99% to 100%.
Maybe there is some special obstacle that is very hard to handle. Could you ask them for details?
I am not sure whether poppler supports any of the older versions completely, and since they are not very common, I would rather advertise 90% compliance with PDF 1.7 than 99% compliance with PDF 1.2.
I won't argue against that.
> 1. A page that says "Here's how to inwtall a free PDF reader." This > is what people should link to when they link to a PDF file. I think > that should be the main page of the pdfreaders.org site.
Thats the way it is right now, see http://pdfreaders.org
If that's the purpose of this page, the first paragraph should be replaced. This page should not discuss versions of PDF. It should not say what is good or bad about PDF (in particular, no need to call it an "open standard". For a person who wants to install a PDF player, that is a confusing distracton
Just say, "If you want to read a PDF file, you don't have to install Adobe's proprietary software that doesn't give you freedom. Here's how to install a free program to read that PDF file."
The information in the first paragraph belongs in http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html. It is relevant there. In pdfreaders.org it only adds unnecessary complexity, which in this page we really want to avoid.
Offering a long list of PDF readers is also unnecessary complexity. I suggest you make the simplest recommendations you can. Recommend just one player for each platform. Make it simple to do what we ask people to do.
The full list could come after, as a sort of appendix.
On 28.01.2012 13:46, Richard Stallman wrote:
Well from my understanding its all about poppler, the library behind evince, okular, xpdf et cetera. And from what I remember when talking with some of the devs is that it might never reach compliance with ISO 32000 (PDF 1.7).That is surprising. We might learn more about the best way to handle this if we understood why they think so. I'd expect them to be strongly motivated to push from 99% to 100%.
Maybe there is some special obstacle that is very hard to handle. Could you ask them for details?
We could approach them again. IIRC it was something about the interactive features of PDF (forms, animations, conditional content), and poppler being designed to display things only, not to interact.
I am not sure whether poppler supports any of the older versions completely, and since they are not very common, I would rather advertise 90% compliance with PDF 1.7 than 99% compliance with PDF 1.2.I won't argue against that.
> 1. A page that says "Here's how to inwtall a free PDF reader." This > is what people should link to when they link to a PDF file. I think > that should be the main page of the pdfreaders.org site. Thats the way it is right now, see http://pdfreaders.orgIf that's the purpose of this page, the first paragraph should be replaced. This page should not discuss versions of PDF. It should not say what is good or bad about PDF (in particular, no need to call it an "open standard". For a person who wants to install a PDF player, that is a confusing distracton
Just say, "If you want to read a PDF file, you don't have to install Adobe's proprietary software that doesn't give you freedom. Here's how to install a free program to read that PDF file."
Well, we wanted to use the main page to at least offer a little bit of education (with further links), since that's the one most people will read.
The information in the first paragraph belongs in http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html. It is relevant there. In pdfreaders.org it only adds unnecessary complexity, which in this page we really want to avoid.
Offering a long list of PDF readers is also unnecessary complexity. I suggest you make the simplest recommendations you can. Recommend just one player for each platform. Make it simple to do what we ask people to do.
The full list could come after, as a sort of appendix.
This is exactly what we had in mind for bigger changes in the mid-term: recommend only one reader on the main page, and show the complete list on a different page. This requires some more fundamental work, as we also want to include readers for mobile platforms and browser plugins.
If I understand MK correctly, you were kind of urgent about the smaller issues (wording on the main page et cetera), to get your campaign going. That's why I postponed the bigger changes to later on. [I estimate it will be at least two months, maybe three before we could get a major overhaul done, because there is mostly volunteers working on it, translations need to be done a.s.o] Minor changes could be done more quickly...
But if you are not in a rush about the changes, we might as well do the entire re-design in one go.
We could approach them again. IIRC it was something about the interactive features of PDF (forms, animations, conditional content), and poppler being designed to display things only, not to interact.
It would be good to ask them about this. It sounds like lots of features are not going to be supported.
GNU PDF is designed to handle all these features. The reason we removed GNU PDF from the high priority projects list was that it seemed evince would do the job. If evince is not going to handle all those features, we should put GNU PDF back in the high priority projects list.
On 29.01.2012 06:35, Richard Stallman wrote:
We could approach them again. IIRC it was something about the interactive features of PDF (forms, animations, conditional content), and poppler being designed to display things only, not to interact.It would be good to ask them about this. It sounds like lots of features are not going to be supported.
GNU PDF is designed to handle all these features. The reason we removed GNU PDF from the high priority projects list was that it seemed evince would do the job. If evince is not going to handle all those features, we should put GNU PDF back in the high priority projects list.
AFAIK there have been work-arounds in poppler to get forms working to a certain degree, but I have never seen it work reliably in okular (e.g. I had to print through a Postscript filter to save form data to file) and heard about similar issues in evince. The whole thing seems to be a hack around poppler, which as I mentioned before was never designed to handle this. But maybe we should approach the poppler people directly, as this is all possibly outdated and second hand knowledge.
I don't know if GNU PDF could help us out here, as there was little progress, even in the time, where it was a high priority project. But I maybe the FSF has resources it could allocate to this? [in any case we should check with the poppler people first]
But maybe we should approach the poppler people directly, as this is all possibly outdated and second hand knowledge.
That is a good idea. Would you, please?
I don't know if GNU PDF could help us out here, as there was little progress, even in the time, where it was a high priority project.
It has made substantial progress, since beginning, but it isn't going fast.
> Just say, "If you want to read a PDF file, you don't have to > install Adobe's proprietary software that doesn't give you freedom. > Here's how to install a free program to read that PDF file."
Well, we wanted to use the main page to at least offer a little bit of education (with further links), since that's the one most people will read.
This is counterproductive to the goal of the campaign. "ISO 32000" is enough to make most people feel uncomfortable. Many will give up reading when they see all that "technical stuff".
Some sites may refuse to link to this page if they think non-techies will get discouraged by it.
The information given is merely technical, and technical education is not our purpose. It is not even important technical information -- for users of PDF. It is of no use to me, so I won't remember it. Only people concerned technically with PDF have a reason to know it.
Since it serves no important purpose and can interfere with the goal, it must go!
> Offering a long list of PDF readers is also unnecessary complexity. > I suggest you make the simplest recommendations you can. > Recommend just one player for each platform. Make it simple > to do what we ask people to do. > > The full list could come after, as a sort of appendix.
This is exactly what we had in mind for bigger changes in the mid-term: recommend only one reader on the main page, and show the complete list on a different page. This requires some more fundamental work, as we also want to include readers for mobile platforms and browser plugins.
A simple change would do most of the job. Just add another short table (or unordered list) above the existing one. In it, recommend just one player for each platform. The existing table, unchanged, can come after.
You can do this simple change today. The larger changes you propose are a good idea, but they can wait.
This simple change is extremely important. The recommendations must be CLEAR. If you tell people they have a choice, and you don't give them information on which to decide, they will feel anxious about choosing wrong.
However, the information on which they could decide is complex, and could not be included here. It might even be inconclusive, so they would still not be sure what to choose, even if they knew it.
So don't make people decide! Recommend ONE reader for each platform. See PlayOgg.org as an example.
After that, you can say, "Here are some other free software PDF readers you can try if you are curious to explore", followed by the existing table. Make it clear to people that they can ignore this, and they it won't cause trouble.
On 29.01.2012 06:35, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Just say, "If you want to read a PDF file, you don't have to > install Adobe's proprietary software that doesn't give you freedom. > Here's how to install a free program to read that PDF file." Well, we wanted to use the main page to at least offer a little bit of education (with further links), since that's the one most people will read.This is counterproductive to the goal of the campaign. "ISO 32000" is enough to make most people feel uncomfortable. Many will give up reading when they see all that "technical stuff".
Some sites may refuse to link to this page if they think non-techies will get discouraged by it.
The information given is merely technical, and technical education is not our purpose. It is not even important technical information -- for users of PDF. It is of no use to me, so I won't remember it. Only people concerned technically with PDF have a reason to know it.
Since it serves no important purpose and can interfere with the goal, it must go!
You misunderstood, we do not educate about ISO 3200 on the front page, I meant educate about the basic concept of Software Freedom and Open Standards (in 2-3 sentences). Like it is right now, but removing the part about "different versions of pdf", as discussed earlier in our mails.
> Offering a long list of PDF readers is also unnecessary complexity. > I suggest you make the simplest recommendations you can. > Recommend just one player for each platform. Make it simple > to do what we ask people to do. > > The full list could come after, as a sort of appendix. This is exactly what we had in mind for bigger changes in the mid-term: recommend only one reader on the main page, and show the complete list on a different page. This requires some more fundamental work, as we also want to include readers for mobile platforms and browser plugins.A simple change would do most of the job. Just add another short table (or unordered list) above the existing one. In it, recommend just one player for each platform. The existing table, unchanged, can come after.
You can do this simple change today. The larger changes you propose are a good idea, but they can wait.
This simple change is extremely important. The recommendations must be CLEAR. If you tell people they have a choice, and you don't give them information on which to decide, they will feel anxious about choosing wrong.
However, the information on which they could decide is complex, and could not be included here. It might even be inconclusive, so they would still not be sure what to choose, even if they knew it.
So don't make people decide! Recommend ONE reader for each platform. See PlayOgg.org as an example.
After that, you can say, "Here are some other free software PDF readers you can try if you are curious to explore", followed by the existing table. Make it clear to people that they can ignore this, and they it won't cause trouble.
We do recommend readers on the platforms, thats whats achieved with the green backgrounds (depends on Javascript, I think, so you might not have noticed, if you have that blocked). "Free Operating Systems" is the only category, where we recommend two readers, Evince and Okular, so as not to get into the whole Gnome VS KDE discussion (and since most users of "Free Operating Systems" will have a Free Reader installed anyway and we don't want to recommend to them, to install a different one). This is however something we thought about for the future -- instead of recommending two, recommend one of two randomly.
Anyway, moving the table and making the download link of the recommended reader more prominent (with icon..) and linking directly to the installer is something for the bigger changes...
On 29.01.2012 13:03, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
On 29.01.2012 06:35, Richard Stallman wrote:
Just say, "If you want to read a PDF file, you don't have to install Adobe's proprietary software that doesn't give you freedom. Here's how to install a free program to read that PDF file."
Well, we wanted to use the main page to at least offer a little bit of education (with further links), since that's the one most people will read.
This is counterproductive to the goal of the campaign. "ISO 32000" is enough to make most people feel uncomfortable. Many will give up reading when they see all that "technical stuff".
Some sites may refuse to link to this page if they think non-techies will get discouraged by it.
The information given is merely technical, and technical education is not our purpose. It is not even important technical information -- for users of PDF. It is of no use to me, so I won't remember it. Only people concerned technically with PDF have a reason to know it.
Since it serves no important purpose and can interfere with the goal, it must go!
You misunderstood, we do not educate about ISO 3200 on the front page, I meant educate about the basic concept of Software Freedom and Open Standards (in 2-3 sentences). Like it is right now, but removing the part about "different versions of pdf", as discussed earlier in our mails.
Offering a long list of PDF readers is also unnecessary complexity. I suggest you make the simplest recommendations you can. Recommend just one player for each platform. Make it simple to do what we ask people to do.
The full list could come after, as a sort of appendix.
This is exactly what we had in mind for bigger changes in the mid-term: recommend only one reader on the main page, and show the complete list on a different page. This requires some more fundamental work, as we also want to include readers for mobile platforms and browser plugins.
A simple change would do most of the job. Just add another short table (or unordered list) above the existing one. In it, recommend just one player for each platform. The existing table, unchanged, can come after.
You can do this simple change today. The larger changes you propose are a good idea, but they can wait.
This simple change is extremely important. The recommendations must be CLEAR. If you tell people they have a choice, and you don't give them information on which to decide, they will feel anxious about choosing wrong.
However, the information on which they could decide is complex, and could not be included here. It might even be inconclusive, so they would still not be sure what to choose, even if they knew it.
So don't make people decide! Recommend ONE reader for each platform. See PlayOgg.org as an example.
After that, you can say, "Here are some other free software PDF readers you can try if you are curious to explore", followed by the existing table. Make it clear to people that they can ignore this, and they it won't cause trouble.
We do recommend readers on the platforms, thats whats achieved with the green backgrounds (depends on Javascript, I think, so you might not have noticed, if you have that blocked). "Free Operating Systems" is the only category, where we recommend two readers, Evince and Okular,
I have to correct myself, for Windows, we also recommend both Sumatra and Evince. I agree this is not optimal and should be changed.
so as not to get into the whole Gnome VS KDE discussion (and since most users of "Free Operating Systems" will have a Free Reader installed anyway and we don't want to recommend to them, to install a different one). This is however something we thought about for the future -- instead of recommending two, recommend one of two randomly.
Anyway, moving the table and making the download link of the recommended reader more prominent (with icon..) and linking directly to the installer is something for the bigger changes...
You misunderstood, we do not educate about ISO 3200 on the front page, I meant educate about the basic concept of Software Freedom and Open Standards (in 2-3 sentences). Like it is right now, but removing the part about "different versions of pdf", as discussed earlier in our mails.
That is true. I must have confused my memory of this with some other text I saw in this discussion. Please forgive me.
Looking again at that page, I think what makes it confusing is that it mentions various topics without saying anything about them. For people who know nothing about them, that will not read well.
Here's what I suggest for the beginning of this page:
<h2>Get a Free Software PDF reader!</h2><p>The <a href='pdf-format.en.html'>Portable Document Format</a> (PDF) is a popular format for publishing formatted text and documents. You can read it with <a href='http://www.fsfe.org/documents/freesoftware.en.html'>Free Software</a> that respects your basic four freedoms to use, study, share and improve them. This gives you control over your computer and helps protect your privacy.</p>
The idea is to move the "education" into pdf-format.en.html.
See how simple and clear that is?
> This simple change is extremely important. The recommendations must > be CLEAR. > ... > So don't make people decide! Recommend ONE reader for each platform. > See PlayOgg.org as an example.
We do recommend readers on the platforms, thats whats achieved with the green backgrounds (depends on Javascript, I think, so you might not have noticed, if you have that blocked).
Yes I noticed the green backgrounds and I understood them, even though I have Javascript disabled. (Does it really depend on Javascript? Maybe there is a bug in the browser configuration.)
So I know what the page looks like and what it means. Please listen to me when I say it is a problem!
You have a table that lists 13 different PDF readers, with some of them highlighted for each system. The message of this is complex. That complexity is the problem. If you don't make it simple, users will get discouraged.
Look at PlayOgg.org. We mention ONLY ONE Ogg player. There are others, of course, but we don't mention them. It would be counterproductive to show people such complexity here.
Please insert a list like this:
<ul> <li> On MS Windows, install <a ...>Evince</a>. <li> On MacOS, install <a ...>Vindaloo</a>. <li> On GNU/Linux and other free operating systems, you probably have a free PDF player installed already. Try displaying a PDF file and see! If that doesn't work, you can install one; see <a ...>advice</a>. </ul>
If the "advice" mentions Evince and Okular, it should say why. ("Evince is for the GNOME desktop, and Okular is for the KDE desktop.")
This way, the user doesn't have to see lots of complexity and worry about what it implies for him.
After that you can put more text perhaps giving background, and you can follow it with
There are many other free PDF readers you can try. At the beginning we mentioned just one on each system, to keep it simple. Here's the list of all the free players we know of, and what systems they run on.
and then the existing table.
On 29.01.2012 21:42, Richard Stallman wrote:
You misunderstood, we do not educate about ISO 3200 on the front page, I meant educate about the basic concept of Software Freedom and Open Standards (in 2-3 sentences). Like it is right now, but removing the part about "different versions of pdf", as discussed earlier in our mails.That is true. I must have confused my memory of this with some other text I saw in this discussion. Please forgive me.
No problem at all.
Looking again at that page, I think what makes it confusing is that it mentions various topics without saying anything about them. For people who know nothing about them, that will not read well.
Here's what I suggest for the beginning of this page:
<h2>Get a Free Software PDF reader!</h2><p>The<a href='pdf-format.en.html'>Portable Document Format</a> (PDF) is a popular format for publishing formatted text and documents. You can read it with<a href='http://www.fsfe.org/documents/freesoftware.en.html'>Free Software</a> that respects your basic four freedoms to use, study, share and improve them. This gives you control over your computer and helps protect your privacy.</p>The idea is to move the "education" into pdf-format.en.html.
That sound reasonable.
See how simple and clear that is?
> This simple change is extremely important. The recommendations must > be CLEAR. > ... > So don't make people decide! Recommend ONE reader for each platform. > See PlayOgg.org as an example. We do recommend readers on the platforms, thats whats achieved with the green backgrounds (depends on Javascript, I think, so you might not have noticed, if you have that blocked).Yes I noticed the green backgrounds and I understood them, even though I have Javascript disabled. (Does it really depend on Javascript? Maybe there is a bug in the browser configuration.)
You are right, it doesn't require JS, we changed that sometime ago, I had just forgotten about it.
So I know what the page looks like and what it means. Please listen to me when I say it is a problem!
You have a table that lists 13 different PDF readers, with some of them highlighted for each system. The message of this is complex. That complexity is the problem. If you don't make it simple, users will get discouraged.
Look at PlayOgg.org. We mention ONLY ONE Ogg player. There are others, of course, but we don't mention them. It would be counterproductive to show people such complexity here.
Yes, you are right about that. It is a criticism we received a few times, and it's something we planned on changing anyhow.
Please insert a list like this:
<ul> <li> On MS Windows, install<a ...>Evince</a>. <li> On MacOS, install<a ...>Vindaloo</a>. <li> On GNU/Linux and other free operating systems, you probably have a free PDF player installed already. Try displaying a PDF file and see! If that doesn't work, you can install one; see<a ...>advice</a>. </ul>
Something similar was planned, but I think right now, it is really best to do all the changes in one go, so that we don't duplicate efforts, trigger useless translations et cetera.
I am quite busy the next couple of days, but I will try to draft some mockups of the new page, based on what we discussed and what pdfreaders@ had planned, until end of the week.
Than we can discuss further steps based on these, more concrete plans, ok?
> Please insert a list like this: > > <ul> > <li> On MS Windows, install<a ...>Evince</a>. > <li> On MacOS, install<a ...>Vindaloo</a>. > <li> On GNU/Linux and other free operating systems, > you probably have a free PDF player installed already. > Try displaying a PDF file and see! If that doesn't > work, you can install one; see<a ...>advice</a>. > </ul>
Something similar was planned, but I think right now, it is really best to do all the changes in one go, so that we don't duplicate efforts, trigger useless translations et cetera.
The changes I've suggested are easy to do; if I were maintaining this page I would have done it in the time I spent writing to you about it.
You don't need to update the translations before you release a modified English page. After all, the existing page is not false. The changes we're talking about are improvements.
There is no pressing need to simultaneously improve the page in all languages. It is fine to improve each language when and as someone can do the work. Some improvement is better than no improvement, after all.
On 05.02.2012 15:04, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Please insert a list like this: > > <ul> > <li> On MS Windows, install<a ...>Evince</a>. > <li> On MacOS, install<a ...>Vindaloo</a>. > <li> On GNU/Linux and other free operating systems, > you probably have a free PDF player installed already. > Try displaying a PDF file and see! If that doesn't > work, you can install one; see<a ...>advice</a>. > </ul> Something similar was planned, but I think right now, it is really best to do all the changes in one go, so that we don't duplicate efforts, trigger useless translations et cetera.The changes I've suggested are easy to do; if I were maintaining this page I would have done it in the time I spent writing to you about it.
You don't need to update the translations before you release a modified English page. After all, the existing page is not false. The changes we're talking about are improvements.
There is no pressing need to simultaneously improve the page in all languages. It is fine to improve each language when and as someone can do the work. Some improvement is better than no improvement, after all.
Well, we would rather do it with other changes, since I am mostly doing the planning right now, but I don't do the actual hacking on the site, and we also have people more skilled in layout and design etc. then myself.
I have done a mockup and attached it. Basically it boils down to having 5 sub-site: 1. Recommended: Showing one recommended reader and the short paragraph proposed by you. I would also like to recommend a browser plugin in addition to the desktop reader (if these are not included in the same package). 2. Overview: An overview over all Free readers on all platforms and browsers. It might be best, to make different paragraphs for all platforms and put a table in each, depending on how many we got. 3. Graphics: the same as the current one. 4. About PDF: like the current "Open Standards" Page but with more information on how well each is supported by Free Software 5. About this Site: the current "About" page.
Should pdf.js become useable we can add a site for that under "For Webmasters", so that webmasters may offer Free Software rendering in the browser. If we do we should also inform about the SaaS issue there and ask those webmasters to explicity inform their users, that the PDF-rendering is achieved by Free Software Javascript running in their browser.
It looks very good now. Thanks. Please implement those changes, and then let's launch the campaign when you're ready.
If you want, we could announce it at LibrePlanet, March 24/25.
I am very happy with http://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html.
John might have some suggestions.
> 3. A page that talks about what PDF versions you should use in making > documents.This is addressed to people making PDF files.
This is what we have at our "Open Standards" page on pdfreaders.org, but it could be improved with the more details and the information we talked about previously (which parts are actually supported to what degree).
What is the URL of that page?
On 29.01.2012 15:08, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 3. A page that talks about what PDF versions you should use in making > documents.This is addressed to people making PDF files. This is what we have at our "Open Standards" page on pdfreaders.org, but it could be improved with the more details and the information we talked about previously (which parts are actually supported to what degree).What is the URL of that page?
