David Desrosiers wrote:
someone else wrote (please keep attributions -- people are important):
People should feel free to repost Project Gutenberg eBooks in any and all formats they wish.
Does that include formats which require specialized readers, such as Microsoft Word, or mobile formats, such as Plucker?
Maybe it is time for PG to encourage (or require) that anything submitted should be in some kind of open standards format, not a proprietary format? Open standards formats include (from the top of my head): plain text (e.g., ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16) marked up text using an open standard Schema/DTD (XML, SGML) TeX/LaTeX (I'm assuming they are open standards of some sort?) PDF/A (when ISO finalizes that spec, maybe later this year) Open Office Plucker etc. Formats which do not reach the threshold of "openness" include: Microsoft Word (and RTF which I think is controlled by MS) PDF (other than the upcoming PDF/A) LIT Mobipocket eReader/Palm/etc. Of course, following Michael's philosophy, the most preferred and durable formats are those which are based on text, which include plain (regularized) text, and XML documents. Even if PG decides not to require this (which I think they should to make a bold statement, and which does not really affect people's ability to submit works), PG should strongly encourage what is submitted to be based on open standards. Jon Noring