Portable documents: problems and (partial) solutions
DAVID W. BARRON · 1996
SUMMARY The paper presents a wide-ranging survey of the issues that arise in producing portable documents, including multimedia and hypermedia documents. It is directed at practitioners, and the approach is therefore pragmatic, based on the current state of the art; the paper does not attempt to provide a comprehensive survey of all previous work on this topic. The nature of an electronic document is discussed, and the various kinds of portability that may be required are defined. Ways in which portability can be achieved in a variety of restricted contexts are presented, including approachesto portability based on international and de factoindustry standards. The likely success of the competing standards is assessed. Finally the paper addresses the question of whether complete document portability is achievable, or even necessary.