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JohnLukeBentley / open-datetime-standard-bootstrap

For evaluating the feasibility of an Open Datetime Standard and, if it is, establishing its basic properties.
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Use PDF only for finalized documents #3

Open Crissov opened 6 years ago

Crissov commented 6 years ago

A 50-page PDF is a tough thing to use as a base for discussion and pull requests. Please consider an easier to edit (and split) format, e.g. Markdown, HTML, Latex.

JohnLukeBentley commented 6 years ago

Thanks Crissov.

If this standard is going to have a medium and long term then ....

On the document format I very much intend, for the medium and long term, to have the source in some kind of markup format. At the moment I'm inclined toward HTML (and CSS with the possibility of some JavaScript). One reason is the source could be published directly as a web page without any transformation (unlike with markdown or latex). In that case publishing as a PDF, even for finalized documents, might be unnecessary.

I agree that some kind of markup format, like HTML, makes pull requests possible and enables discussion. At a minimum it makes copying and pasting parts of the standard, for quoting purposes, far easier ... I've have deliberately enabled copying of the PDF text but it remains unweildly.

On the document size, I take it your reference to 50 pages and splitting means you think that document quite large. I'm ambivalent, for the medium and long term, about whether it should be split or kept as one document. The decision is probably subsidiary to the two possible directions the Bibliographic Date Format could go:

  1. If we wanted to promote Bibliographic Datetime Format as THE go-to datetime format then the "Bibliographic ISO 8601 Profile" format would be a conceptual tool used along the way to explaining Bibliographic Datetime Format, and highlighting how it differs from ISO. In this case keeping BibliographicDatetimeFormat.pdf as one document, as is its current form, is probably the way to go.
  2. If we wanted to promote the two formats, Bibliographic Datetime Format and the Bibliographic ISO 8601 Profile as having independent utility, and I've suggested to @moewew this is a real possibility, then splitting the document is probably the way to go.

Whether the document is physically split note that it is already conceptually split. I've used pdf "bookmarks" (that misnomer that means headings) that should be exposed by your pdf reader's bookmark/heading pane.

Whether the document is physically split or not I've been very much entertaining a conceptual overhaul along these lines:

If the document was, then, split we could end up with three documents:

That might also enable me to make the BibliographicDatetimeFormat.pdf less verbose, whether split or not.

However, for the short term it is uncertain whether this entire project has any legs and any discussion needs to be had at the broad level (such that, for example, pull requests are superfluous).

For the short term I've found it convenient to "prototype" the document in Word. That approach has several benefits: WYSIWYG is not without it's attractions (e.g. in styling); Zotero Reference Management integration is fairly solid. Given that the whole document is subject to radical overhaul, if it is to be worked on at all, I'd ask for your fortitude in bearing its current format (as a pdf and without the Word source published).

But I hasten to reveal that my overarching motive for sticking my head in Datetime format standards (and Bibilatex, Zotero, CSL, pandoc, etc) is to assist in the (already very advanced) development of a toolset that facilitates that transformation of markdown into the four golden formats: HTML, pdf, Ebup, Amazon's Kindle format. Because markdown, for a range of documents, is better as the source for a range of reasons.

That points to several things: I trust that is inline with the spirit of your post here; there's a chicken and egg situation (if the toolset was sufficiently mature I might have started in markdown); and there's an amble supply of irony.