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As much as the technologist inside me wants to see a paperless world accessed through iPad like devices there is another part of me that is uncomfortable with that concept. The uncomfortable feeling comes from my innate value of books, pens and paper. My Generation X contemporaries (i.e. born in the 1960’s and 1970’s) will happily reel off a conveyor belt of plausible reasons why we think paper and pens are here to stay, but is this really just a generation game?

So what arguments do we (Generation X) come up with?

1. Paper books are easier on the eyes and you can read them easier.
2. Paper is less fragile than electronic formats. There is less to go wrong, for instance no need to power a paper book. Also if you drop a paper book into the bath it’s cheaply replaced, the same can’t be said about the eBook reader.
3. There is an emotional pleasure in simply seeing shelves of books. There is also an intrinsic value in a book that goes beyond the contents. It’s in the cover design and material, the binding, its weight and the tactile nature of a book.
4. There is a sense of ownership in having a physical book that just isn’t there in an electronic book. There is something more permanent about paper.
5.  A sketch on the back of a beer mat can record a world changing idea. It’s the freedom to sketch anything you like anywhere on the paper that makes a paper and pen a powerful user experience. Pickup a piece of paper and a pen and you can be sketching and writing with freedom in seconds (instant on!).
6. Some people read paper books as a way to take a break from the computer screen that rules their working life. We’re in front of a computer screen all day and when you relax you just want to have a different experience.
7.  Cuddly Toy! (hint.. Google the title…)

Ok, so looking back across all of the reasons I gave above I can see counter arguments from the virtual world and to be honest the arguments for paper do seem a bit generational.

A recent study by Habbo Hotel that asked 49,000 Digital Natives a.k.a. Generation Z (born 1990’s and 2000’s) to share their views on how the internet will shape the future. The following finding suggests they don’t have the same reticence about replacing paper:

“However, whilst the TV remains a relevant and important medium to this media-savvy generation, traditional print media (newspapers, magazines and books) won’t fair as well with 55 per cent of respondents saying that they will be extinct either very soon or some day in the future. Only 18 per cent feel that printed media will always have a place.”

Generation Z have grown up with the internet and mobile devices, and they are certainly comfortable and possibly even dependent on technology. To some extent they live their lives in the virtual world and don’t see a need to get away from it. They have access to a huge source of information and it doesn’t go stale like the information in printed books. They also have a green conscience that reverses the emotional context for a paper book.

Even if the feelings that Generation X has about paper and pens has some validity, it is obvious that Generation Z will eventually shut that door. The iPad and its descendents are the vehicle for this final move to the electronic world. It makes me wonder however what will replace books, DVDs and CDs under the Christmas tree in the next decade. In the meantime my sons will be getting a number of annuals and story books from this Generation X Santa.

Happy Holidays!

If gDoc Fusion is on your Christmas list, why not let Christmas come early  – buy your copy now and get 30% off until 31 December 2010.   

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Have a very Merry Christmas from the team at Global Graphics.

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Several of the ISO PDF standards committees met in Ottawa, Canada last week; this is a quick catch up on the key points from each.

PDF/A – Archiving

The PDF/A committee reviewed all comments to the final ballot on ISO 19005-2 (PDF/A-2) and ratified the standard for publication. All of the meeting’s agreements will now get rolled into the text, which will then be forwarded to ISO Central Secretariat for final processing. It’s always hard to predict how long that will take, but I’m expecting publication some time in Q1 2011.

We also made some good progress on PDF/A-3, which differs from PDF/A-2 in only one respect: that any file can be embedded within it for a variety of reasons. This can be used to attach source documents (e.g. the Word file you made the PDF/A file from), measurement data used to create a graph, alternative representations etc. The embedded files don’t need to follow the same rules for being meaningfully readable at some distant point in the future as the main PDF/A content itself.

PDF/E – Engineering

The PDF/E committee agreed to start work on PDF/E-2 to enable the archiving of engineering documents. They are running into one of the most common challenges in standards work, however, in that there is widespread demand for the standard, but finding experts willing to invest time in developing it is proving difficult. Volunteers would be welcome!

PDF/UA – Universal Accessibility

The PDF/UA-1 standard is currently in what may be its final ballot before ratification, so wasn’t discussed in Ottawa. If all goes according to plan, that will be published in the second half of 2011, and may even become one leg of the next version of Section 508.

The committee started the work to develop a PDF/UA-2 standard, based on ISO 32000-2 (the next version of the ISO PDF standard itself, see below). That standard already includes a lot of work on accessibility that’s been done in preparation for its use in this way.

PDF itself

All of the comments to the last committee draft (CD) ballot on the next version of PDF (ISO 32000-2) were reviewed and resolved. Several more substantial proposals regarding topics such as what a PDF reader must do and the relationships between the various subset standards were discussed.

The committee decided that the standard is not yet solid enough to go to a ‘Draft International Standard’ (DIS) ballot, which could have been the final stage of the process. Instead it will be updated with the agreements from this meeting and then issued for another CD ballot. The results of that will be discussed in May next year, and may lead to a DIS ballot after then. If so then 32000-2 might be ratified at the end of 2011, and published in early 2012.

That’s it from the great wet North (for some reason the UK and Canada appeared to swap their early Winter weather last week).

Martin