[tex-live] interactiveplot

[Reinhard Kotucha]

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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