Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!kth.se!ugle.unit.no!nuug!ifi!enag From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso Subject: Re: ISO Whining Message-ID: Date: 30 Jan 91 19:41:44 GMT References: <142850@pyramid.pyramid.com> Sender: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 82 Nntp-Posting-Host: svarte.ifi.uio.no In-Reply-To: lstowell@pyrnova.pyramid.com's message of 29 Jan 91 20:32:44 GMT Originator: enag@svarte.ifi.uio.no Lon, I think you're a little confused. When you speak of "the '88 standards", I believe you're referring to CCITT documents, not ISO documents. CCITT docs are considerably cheaper than their ISO counterparts from the outset. I've observed a factor of three as the norm, with peaks as high as a factor of 20. When you speak of "most of them except Internet RFC's", I'm not sure what you mean. Internet RFC's are not "standards". They are not published every four years, either, or yearly or any other fixed time interval. I'm quite certain it's "ANSI" with only one I, as opposed to one of the more ubiquitous standards known as ASCII. When you speak of ANSI "owning" the copyrights of all ITU standards in the U.S., I believe you intended to indicate a licensing agreement. Is this so? Last I heard, Global Engineering had a license agreement with ITU, and ANSI is rumored to have given Global exclusive right to sell or duplicate their standards. You ask about other countries. I hope Norway qualifies. I've bought about two shelf-feet of CCITT's Blue Book and it's quite inexpensive. Only $500 a shelf-foot or something in the vicinity thereof. I've also bought about three shelf-inches of ISO standards, and that totalled $2,000, so we're talking $4,000 a shelf-foot. Some of the more perversely priced documents would extrapolate to $10,000 a shelf-foot, but that's unusual. Most notably, the ISO ODA specs cost 12 times more than the CCITT specs, and they are supposed to be "technically aligned". There are things in the ISO ODA which are not in the CCITT ODA, but there are also issues of decency in pricing, here. I've wanted to acquire the ISO documents for MOTIS, but CCITT X.400 was available at 1/8 of the cost, so I bought that instead. I also wanted to acquire the ISO X.25 specifications because of the higher quality of the description of several of the "sub-layers", but I've had to shelve that. I bought SGML and its amendment and associated SDIF and registration stuff, and the TR (9573), and then I recently bought two copies of Goldfarb's {The SGML Handbook} shipped with DHL from London or maybe it was New York, never figured out, and both of these books cost much less than the above mentioned standards. Note that this book _contains_ the ISO 8879 text, including amendment and suggested improvements. In my opinion, ISO's pricing policy is somewhere between insane and mentally warped. Also, I hate Helvetica for regular text, but that's another of their wrong decisions, along with their insistance on two- column text. CCITT goes for what looks like Times Roman and has full- page layout, and it's a lot easier to deal with. I have one gripe with CCITT, though: They make a lot of typos and even though I get "corrigenda" sheets in the mail every four weeks or so, it's annoying. I have found ISO with their incessant Amendments are even worse to keep track of. Finding out what section foo in the amended SGML said was a real pain in the butt. Here's one who would really appreciate electronic versions, and diffs each time they made changes. Not only would it be possible to find out what the current version actually says, one could make hypertext links into this mass of mangled English prose. (Goldfarb's SGML Handbook has made this possible, _on_paper_, and I'm really impressed. I wish more publishers would get the idea.) From what I've seen, there's no danger of the U.S. losing its competitive position in ISO because of unfair pricing policies. BTW, I'm not opposed to copyright on standards, restrictive dupli- cation policies or covering costs, it's just that with a little more sense of marketing these things, they could easily sell an order of magnitude more of them and make a lot of money in the process. If ISO 8859 was available in the bookstore, I'm sure several students over here would have had their own copy, for instance. The times when only manufacturers were interested in ISO standards are gone. ISO doesn't seem to have noticed its recent popularity. -- [Erik Naggum] Snail: Naggum Software / BOX 1570 VIKA / 0118 OSLO / NORWAY Mail: , My opinions. Wail: +47-2-836-863 Another int'l standards dude.