[tex-live] movie15 and media9

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 14:11, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> the rules require that tex live packages do not require use of another
> non-free package. some of the things that movie15 and media9 (and
> several other packages) offer are only usable with acrobat reader.

You can open generated documents with other browsers, it's only that
you don't get the full experience (you cannot move objects around).

But if that is the policy, why don't you block/remove half of
functionality of asymptote then? All of the following examples are
only fully usable with Acrobat Reader:
    http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/3D%20graphs
You can view the document, but if you want to move objects around, you
need Adobe's software.

You can also start removing functionality from many other TeX packages
that support JavaScript and you can start removing functionality from
XeTeX since AAT fonts only work on non-open-source Mac OS X etc. etc.
etc.

JavaScript is part of ISO specification of PDF, but despite that there
is currently no other browser that supports it. It is not a closed
source technology (it is part of ISO specification), it is only that
open source developers are "too lazy" to implement the functionality.
I honestly don't understand why support for JavaScript or 3D objects
would be prohibited. The package that has been removed is by far not
the only package supporting features that no other viewer is capable
to present. Other browsers still display PDFs, but they are not able
to do stepwise increments of contents or present animations.

Mojca