[tex-live] interactiveplot
Reinhard Kotucha
reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Fri Nov 28 01:38:17 CET 2014
On 2014-11-26 at 21:21:47 +0100, Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 27.11.2014 18:21, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> >
> > To be more precise: PDF became an ISO standard. In case the
> > `interactiveplot' bundle relies on extensions specific to Adobe
> > Reader, it should be rejected. If it relies on the ISO standard only,
> > it should be part of TeXLive.
>
> The criteria is too week.
>
> >From https://www.tug.org/texlive/copying.html:
>
> | As a general statement, the TeX Live maintainers agree (at least
> | for the shared purpose of working on TeX Live) with the principles
> | and philosophy of the free software movement.
> |
> | Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, all the software in
> | TeX Live meets the requirements of the Free Software Foundation's
> | definition of free software, and the Debian Free Software
> | Guidelines. In the rare cases of conflict, we generally follow
> | the FSF.
> | Furthermore, the material in TeX Live should not require
> | nonfree software to be useful.
>
> The last sentence is the issue here. The package creates
> a PDF file with features, which are understood by
> Acrobat Reader (see the README of the package). However,
> AR is *not* free according to Debian/FSF.
>
> The question is, do free/open PDF reader(s) exist,
> which also support the features? AFAIK, just one
> such a PDF reader would be enough.
The situation is more complicated. A package containing features
which require non-free software can be part of TeX Live if it provides
other features which do not depend on non-free software.
An example is Asymptote. Asyptote can create interactive 3D graphics
which can currently processed by Acrobug [Reader] only. But even
without this feature the package is very useful and therefore part of
TeX Live.
Regarding the current policy I agree with Boris. It's surely a
hen/egg problem. A few years ago I wrote a script which creates PDF
slide-shows from all JPEG files in a particular directory.
Undoubtedly I wouldn't have written the script if there were no JPEG's.
Regards,
Reinhard
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