Steve, Paul, and listoids

I have never been particularly sympathetic to "publishers" complaints
about copyright safety with electronic publication when photocopying
is so prevalent and cheap.  thus I also have little sympathy with Adobe's
pdf security arguments.  Don't mis understand, I do not believe in stealing
or pirating author's work, I just don't see how it makes a difference whether
you print a pdf file and scann it as Steve suggested, or
whether you copy it from PDF directly to text.

both methods have serious problems so far, mostly format related.

I have used all the formerly available means for converting PDF files for
technical materials, and with all, have had to have many many hours of
proof reading time spent to get usable results.

I am about to set up windoweyes and acrobat reader 5 to see if
the claims of PDF accessibility are real, not just
advertising.

I see no reason why ADOBE should make it possible for an author to forbid
access to his work for visually impaired people, if he doesn't want us to
read it then don't publish it on the net.

If it is absolutely necessary to make it impossible to copy the screen reader's
interpretation into text files, then so be it, I suppose, but we are still
being placed in the position of purchasing one of 2 or so very expensive screen
readers to do something everyone else can have free.

It isn't a solution, just a minor step on the way.

When I find out how the new acrobat REALLY works for REAL
technical documentation I'll let the list know.

Wish us luck we'll need it.

Tom Fowle
Embedded systems developer/ Rehabilitation Engineer
The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center
Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute
San Francisco





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