[BenTrafford]

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Ben's missing the point, again and again.

And you're failing to respond to my points...again, and again, and again.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

OASIS includes tech people from MANY companies who could play a very active role in the standards development process without ETI and Adobe dominating the show. Horror of horrors, most OASIS experts aren't as tied to specific companies within the e-book biz as key members of the IDPF crowd are.

David, have you ever worked on an OASIS spec? Or any standards body, for that matter? In short, do you really have any idea what you're talking about?

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Meanwhile I remain baffled why ETI cochairs must preside over both of the crucial tech committees at the IDPF.

Because they have the time and resources to do the work.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

As for the DRAFT OpenReader spec, it's based on the old work of IDPF long before Adobe-ETI took it over and ignored the Pub Struct Working where standards dev happened. A little rigging, eh?

Well. Hmm. No. The old Pub Struct work is no longer representative of the state of the art, and badly needed to be overhauled. It informs the current effort, as opposed to dominating it.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Simply put, Ben's note is is really risible.

I thought the Star Wars references were particularly funny, myself!

Originally Posted by davidrothman

As for the missing blind man, he's more needed than ever on the IDPF board--it's a shame George isn't back to oversee the standards setters.

George is alive and well and doing the real work -- making sure the standard is fully accessible.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

While the IDPF isn't the only reason for the Tower of eBabel, it has been no small factor.

And having nothing in its place would've been better, David? I'm amazed how much you malign IDPF, considering that OpenReader's work is little more than a copy of it.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

The IDPF let its standards efforts fade away until OpenReader came along. Pre-OR, the IDPF was "agnostic" about consumer-level standards, lest it offend proprietary formatters like Adobe.

And virtually everyone else. Nobody wanted a consumer-level format. If they wanted it, it would've happened. It may yet happen.

Regardless, your rational for why IDPF went into hibernation between '01 and '04 is flawed. It's not because of some dark, mysterious plan. It's because the dot-com bubble imploded, and most of us were a little too busy making sure our families got fed to focus on ebook standards.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

As for an accusation of censoring Ben's comments on the TeleBlog--well, that's a pretty good indication of his care with the facts (sarcasm alert).

I posted here: http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5134

And it never showed. What was I supposed to think? Sorry, I assumed you competently handled your held comments. My bad. In the future, I'll be sure to email you directly when my comments don't appear.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Meanwhile I note that in his fixation on the TeleBlog Ben paid insufficient heed to Jon Noring, the founder of OpenReader. Poor Jon. He's probably feeling left out.

Jon is reasonable and doesn't make things up out of whole cloth. Jon doesn't see conspiracies where there are none. Jon isn't wandering around bashing IDPF -- he's doing OpenReader, which I think is a mistake. In short, Jon isn't being an offensive jerk who is spreading misinformation with no basis in fact.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Finally I'm flattered that Ben sees OpenReader and the TeleBlog as such a menace. Great. Thanks, Ben buddy! We're pretty cost-effective. Budget for IDPF director's salary: $100K. Budget for OpenReader and TeleBlog salaries: $0.

You keep bringing this up. Do I detect a hint of jealousy?

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Jon and I, you see, have this powerful aversion to e-books ending up on the electronic equivalent of acidic paper. We need durable, nonproprietary e-book formats, not ephemeral dreck from Adobe and the rest. Clean up the standards process NOW or we'll eventually see open standards Flashized--or the equivalent--out of existence. An OASIS-type approach involving many tech-hip standards setters would be a great precaution against standards rot.

As opposed to the IDPF, which you evidently feel is filled with technical incompetents who have nefarious plans to trash ebooks.

Does that really make sense to you? I mean, really?