Re: [school-discuss] Britannica

[Cameron Miller <cdmiller@adams.edu>]

Doug Loss wrote:
> Ben Armstrong wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 09:38:50AM -0400, Jim Thomas wrote:
>>
>>>I can see no problem with writing an open-source EB reader.  It would
>>>really be no different from QGeo which will render content from the
>>>National Geographic CDs.  The only way EB could "pull the plug" would be
>>>to change the format of the content, and they certainly wouldn't do that
>>>to kill linux support for their product.  It's in their best interest to
>>>have a linux-enabled app to read their content.  Having an open source
>>>reader does not require free content.
>>>
>>That's quite a different kettle of fish.  I'd have no objections
>>contributing to an open source project to develop a reader that just happens
>>to also read non-free content.
>>
> 
> This is what I'm trying to promote.  I don't particularly care who develops (or
> how they do it) an application that allows EB, WB, Grolier, or any other
> encyclopedia CDs to be read.  I just know that something like this needs to be
> available for Linux for it to be more easily selectable for school use.
> 
> --
> Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed

That would be really nice.

Years ago, some students at the U of Arizona created an app to translate 
between several different proprietary molecular modeling file formats. 
They went to an intermediate format of their own to accomplish the task. 
  If this approach could be done for some of the various proprietary 
Encyclopedia data formats we could allow for their display using any 
tool that understood the open intermediate format, and allow for 
Encyclopedias du jour to be added at any time by independent developers.

- cameron

-- 
- cameron miller
- UNIX Systems Administrator
- cdmiller@adams.edu