[Asis-standards] ISO comment

[Mark Needleman]

Folks

i just supplied the following coments ( this is a liason document so 
NISO members can only provide comments and note vote) on:

ISO/CD 24517-2.4, Document management — Engineering document format 
using PDF — Part 2: Use of ISO 32000-2 including support for long-term 
preservation (PDF/E-2)

Comments:

1) The idea that a specialist community extends a core standard to 
better suit their domain requirements as engineering are doing here with 
reference to the use of PDF specifically for engineering documentation 
is well established, and is definitely the kind of thing that NISO and 
other standards bodies should encourage (the alternative is less 
interoperable domain specific standards).

2) The extensions seem  sensible and provide greater grounding for this 
community.

3) From a records keeping and digital preservation standpoint obviously 
there are concerns that encryption is applied sparingly to electronic 
materials, otherwise long term access and usability is in question. 
While the standard allows that PDF/E2 documents are not encrypted, our 
specific concerns are whether or not this default will be applied by 
software tool developers. We know that's not something that the standard 
can deal with, but its very relevant to the broader information 
management context.

Comments were provided by Baden Hughes

mark