Pdf Sucks
Pdf SucksI hate Adobe's PortableDocumentFormat. Why is it so prevalent?
Because ItWorks. Because many people find it a useful, common format for document presentation. It has a universality that approaches plain ASCII, yet provides a consistent presentation.
History of PDF: http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/history/history01.htm
Reasons PDF Sucks
Counterpoint
PDF is fine when used for its strength: preserving a document's data and presentation across different OperatingSystems. The "and presentation" is critical. If presentation is not important, other formats such as HTML and XML often serve just as well. (Never underestimate the PowerOfPlainText!)
It also has the plus over HTML of including images within a single file. Sure, you can give out a zip or tarball of a bunch of HTML pages and images, but that's more of a pain to work with for the reader.
Also subsetted fonts-- this means that display fonts don't have to be turned into images, and you can choose text fonts that may look better than whatever came with the reader's OS. Of course this cuts both ways, the author has to choose fonts that look good.
Alternatives
If all you have is plain text, you might as well use the PowerOfPlainText. If all you have is formatted text (no images), HTML and XML are superior (because they let people view the content at their favorite window width, re-flowing the text to avoid annoying horizontal scrolling).
If the document is a single image, PNG or JPEG is better.
Anton Ertl claims that (compressed) PostScript is always superior to PDF in every way. http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/~anton/why-not-pdf.html [EditHint: if you disagree with any of his statements, is this a good place to discuss it?]
Have you ever looked inside a PDF file? It may preserve the document's data, but it does it in a non-standard way.
More moved to PdfSearchingSucks
Let's not forget that PDF is a terminal format, kids. This thing is essentially like PostScript (another Adobe creation) or other heavily encoded presentations. As folks keep pointing out, PDF is the equivalent of a printed page in machine reproducible form. It's one step up from a JPEG image. Once you have your data in PDF, it ain't goin' anywhere else.
Quibble: I routinely copy/paste from PDF ... but only because need requires. But then I've also had to scavenge PS, so ...
PDF's original purpose was to be a platform-neutral way to preserve a document's data and presentation, primarily for printed documents. However, its success has encouraged Adobe to add more bells and whistles, including the ability to edit PDF files directly. Adobe also seems to think Acrobat is a good format for displaying data, which is where it really fails. I don't even want to think about PDF forms.
Thank your IT staff for finding and installing the correct print drivers for you. The most common problem is to get text printed out with all of the single spaces between words stripped out. The precursor to the wiki?
I've never had a problem at home, either. I've never had to change or update a printer driver for PDF.
One contract job I worked on took extra time because some of the client's contacts couldn't display the some of the fonts embedded in the PDF. Others couldn't print them. The solution? Convert the source doc to Arial and Times New Roman. That's "portable"? Don't get me started on what happens when the Symbol font starts throwing intermittent errors in Distiller (the dreaded "Saggittarius" [sic] error)...
I've seen PDF output with some HP PCL printing drivers produce pages empty but background and images. The same PDF document printed with the HP PS printer driver was absolutely fine. Understandably such an ideosyncrasy can upset people.
That's what sucks. PDF is fine for sending docs from an app to a printer. The problems arise when it is used to send docs from an app to a person.
Except when the person being sent the data doesn't have the app - you need some way of getting the data and presentation to them. One possibility is a Viewer app (e.g. WordViewer?, ExcelViewer?), another is something like PDF or PostScript; you can't email a pile of paper, and bitmaps are too huge.
Perhaps we should hone the distinction between content and presentation. A travel agency brochure with photographic backgrounds and fancy layout is a different beast than a technical paper filled with tables, equations, and figures. For the former, presentation matters highly, and PDF isn't a bad choice. For technical papers, most readers don't care about the presentation, so long as the content is preserved. (i.e., it doesn't matter much whether the paper is formatted using one or two columns.) The problem is that using PDF to preserve those tables & equations & figures drags in PDF's weaknesses as well.
Actually, I care quite a bit about two-column formatting. TenWordLine explains the reason: text is most easily readable when there are eight to ten words in a line (though not all agreed). Yes, I care about formatting. I don't care that I'm reading *exactly* the same format as everyone else. I would far prefer reading two-column text that's been reflowed to exactly fit the window I'm displaying it in, so I can read it from beginning to end scrolling only downwards -- and reflows instantly whenever I change the size of that window. Rather than making every author worry about the "best" width and "best" number of columns for each and every work they produce, it seems closer to OnceAndOnlyOnce for this to be done by the display software.
What's particularly frustrating about technical papers is that many are written in LaTex, and could be converted to HTML with little extra work.
As far as the user interface goes: Why couldn't a PDF reader be built as a browser plug-in that would just render the content inside the browser window and let the browser control the navigation. The user would move the image up or down or select text according to the way the particular browser normally does it. The fact that the content was in PDF versus HTML format should be hidden from the user. I haven't written a browser plug-in so I don't know what can be done. But you could have the browser, such as IE or Netscape just issue API calls to the viewer saying things like "move up 3 pixels", "select text from here to here", etc. Seems like it would work. -- Will
PDF sucks. But every other format which you could use for the same purpose sucks more.
With the possible exception of PostScript. Anton Ertl claims that (compressed) PostScript is always superior to PDF in every way. http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/~anton/why-not-pdf.html (PDF is built on PostScript.)
Adobe is pushing the free AdobeAcrobatReader, therefore most people can read PDF files. Nobody is out there pushing GhostScript except a few geeks (note that I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that I don't see anything that would change it).
I use PDF because the scanning software I use allows the document to be scanned, OCR'd and then the text overlaid on the bitmap image so I end up with a file that looks like the original but with capturable, searchable text. I know of no other format that can do that (apart from some really difficult to create HTML).
I think this could be done in PostScript. Am I missing something?
Can't be done in PostScript if the scanning software doesn't support it!
Then there's the pain of following a hyperlink and waiting while your browser sucks up resources loading the Acrobat runtime.
PDF .... the player download is 17 megs in size @#!@#
PDF ... it displays a stupid startup screen that is a advertisement for ADOBE, why would my users want to see that?
Ask for your money back
PDF ... It stays running on your users machine and uses 14 megs of memory till you quit it !@#!@
PDF ... it displays hard edges on all vector graphics !!
I think the real problem is that it's impossible to format a document so that it looks good both on screen and on paper (many web pages have a "printer friendly" button for the same reason). I've seen PDF files that work well on screen, but you wouldn't want to print them (see ScreenFriendlyPdf for links to examples).
Caution, a CategoryRant classic follows
PDF is a fad that everyone just uses because so and so uses PDF. Google is flooded with it.
The main problem I see with PDF, even if PDF has some useful purposes, is everything about it is useless.
'It is used in the wrong situations and applications, too, doubling it's ignoramus affect. And when used in its supposed "rightful" situations (postscript, accuracy, e-reading), it turns into a paradox or conflicting UselessToMankind? situation once again.
JustBecause?, that's why: I see businesses everywhere using PDF, JustBecause? it's a fad. One business uses PDF, so the next business should use it. When I go to google and see PDF websites, I purposely avoid them. Businesses are losing money from me because they are using PDF. I go to several websites that have loads of products all available online in html. Then I try out a PDF website just for pure FunAndFantasy?. Downloads, and inside the download is a text file with a company logo on it. This displeases me, the customer. I could care less about a company logo. I see through the companies' little game. All show, no content. Nice logo on your text file, but why did it take so much hard drive space up, and why do you want me to print your brochure, when this is an online electronic thing, that we are doing here (websites, are online... PDF is offline, where does PDF tie into online, if it is offline? Printing, is offline, paper, is offline, PDF is for paper, not for reading, since it is blurry and not meant for reading.. yet they call the product "reader", and it's everywhere "online")
PDF detours customers and reduces sales, from a CommonSense perspective:
These business websites are using PDF because other businesses are using PDF (fad, FollowTheLeader?, stupid, retarded). I can assure you that I will not buy from your website (businesses have one main purpose: to profit, or to make sales), if you are trying to show off a corporate logo in a text file by using PDF. I can assure you that I will buy from you if you have a fast website with useful information on it and some nice easy ordering process. Try and link me up with your PDF file, how the devil am I going to click on an add to cart button in a PDF file? Products on the website are described in a PDF file, but the add to cart button is missing, dingbat. I don't' care if the PDF file has some reference to the product I have to look up on the website, because PDF is taking up my screen, I can't open up my browser and figure this all out.
Using HTML and PDF, combining forces on the website, doubling your negative return on investment No, wait, it's not combining any good forces, it's doubling the workload, doubling the expenses, and confusing the customer to choose from PDF or html. Or better yet customer uses DitchOnArrival? instinct when they see all the PDF buttons and ornaments on the site.
I want to buy, but why are you hiding information from me in pdf - I'd like to see the info now, not after I download.
You arrive on a PDF website, and see products that you want to buy. They are described on the site half-assedly, and they force you to use PDF to get the other halfassedly info out of them. Great, so this business has hired "PDF people" to do PDF work, and "HTML coders" to do HTML work, and they half to figure out which SideOfTheAss? the PDF wil take (a completely different format than html). Pricing on PDF, info on HTML, vice versa? Why? Confusion? To create a mess? Added costs include all the bloatware licenses that the business has to pay for the PDF editors and so called "Tools".
I've made my decision I want some products at a good price, I need to get the products, I don't need to pretend I'm in a car dealership looking for brochures to take and then toss away. A website has everything the buyer needs need in HTML,. you've jacked up your prices because you have to hire that PDF programmer (PDF programmer, AhHa), plus you have the html work co mingling, which doesn't commingle with the PDF. Fine, thank you - I don't want to purchase from you, I'll go to the non-jacked-up competitor of yours same product, a nice database driven site, and no PDF.
Use PDF, spend more money
You'd like to incur paper and ink costs, when the whole point of the web is free digital onscreen data. PDF defies this rule. OH, but PDF is a reader, remember.. nope, they call it a reader, but it's got blurry text and is hard to scroll, so it's actually made for printing. A bunch of confusion there. Not a good reader, called a reader, for printing, has postscript for big printers people don't have, portability but only portable to a super computer, so not portable.
They boast about printing, because it sucks as a reader, but they call it a reader, I don't understand.
Reason a lot of people do not like PDF, is because it is slow on even new computers, old computers, any computers. Back in the days of pentium 75, you open up a file manager, or paint program, and it's fast. Word processing program, it's fast. Now you have a new computer that's 500 percent faster than your pentium 75 and your documents you are reading in PDF are painfully slow. SteppingBackwards?. PDF will not work fast on any new machine, as it's like trying to make a bitmap as fast as a JPEG. It will crash a pentium 75, but how come I was able to run those fast applications on a pentium 75 when I had it, and now I have a new computer with a slow PDF on it? PDF defies the laws of ThePointOfHavingAComputer. PDF is used in the wrong applications (even SUN Microsystems is guilty of using PDF, in situations where HTML is far more polite or adequate for what they were doing (old news, archives, Java info, etc.) I can't believe sun Microsystems would sink low enough to get you to download their corporate logo embedded in basically a text file inside (this is what PDF is, essentially, a bunch of corporate BS selling to more corporate BS). Half of the PDF file is composed of a nice flashy sun Microsystems colorful logo, and colors throughout, that nobody really gives a rat's ass about it, we are trying to locate some text fast, even RTF would do, or HTML, it's fast, oh that would be nice, why the PDF, you stinkies? And now, because sun uses PDF, another company will use it. They use it, so we must use it. They are big, follow them.
People will lament about how PDF is so platform portable. Why aren't we praising the lord for html? There is no way that someone can not make a special RTF that you can attach your corporate logo in? It's so hard to make some RichTextFormat viewer program that allows graphics and logs to be embedded on to them? If the point of PDF is for businesses to attach their colorful logos in (see all the businesses PDF files: text with corporate logs and colors in them), what does this have to do with any of the "good things" that PDF can do? RichTextFormat program with a corporate logo in it - How hard would that be to create? You don't need PDF for a corporate logo and RTF.
Oh, but wait you say, that's not the point you see. The point of PDF is for the printing, you are missing the big guns here. Printing, because, what you see, is what you print. Accurate printing: printing in PDF ensures your pages print off as they appear on your screen! Beauty of PDF! Wait, what is the beauty of PDF then, first you tell me it's a reader and perfect for brochures, then we admit that no it isn't a good reader, so it must be a printer that it excels in (even though, they call it .. reader?). Oh really, and our printer hardware is going to live up to perfection of PDF then is it? Those rollers inside the printer that make the page slightly off, but un noticeable to the eye... don't bother us, but yet we have to care about PDF being accurate, what you see is what you print.. What you see is not what you print, and there is no point in trying to print what you see on screen exactly, since all printers are hardware, and you eyes couldn't care less whether one page was slightly different than the other (off center, you don't notice it wince margins make things look even anyway). PDF claims to be the postscript thing, and yet the big post script printers, are the ones that defy the purpose of PDF: accurate printing. Big printers have larger mechanical movement inside them, and put pages off center more so than a small little tiny laptop printer. If the bubble jet printer, or even a laser jet printer, doesn't print the same page each time (mechanical imperfection) then this can't be the boasting about PDF. This isn't and advantage to PDF.. since hardware imperfections are everywhere, and there is no point in perfection, since it's just a piece of paper, that can be imperfect.. our eyes don't give a care. But, wait! PDF is what you see, is what you print, how many other programs do this! Read above please, I just explained that, so now you are boasting about PDF is this and that. I just proved that this and that is insignificant, and there is really nothing left of PDF, or any reason for it's existence at all, but I will continue.
How does PDF perform in regards to hardware oriented printing accuracy? It doesn't magically set our rollers in the laser to not jiggle a bit, and offset the page. That happens all the time- hardware imperfections. So what would be the point of creating adobe to be perfect "what you see is what you print", when printers are not perfect when they actually print, due to the hardware imperfections?
Printing ACCURACY. as if that really was needed for the general population of pc users - pc users who have printers that aren't perfect. I'd be better off taping a page of white paper on my monitor, and using a pencil to trace all the words off the screen by hand. That'd be the true accurate method.
PDF ceases to hold one advantage over all other technology around and available.
Ebooks: it takes me as long to find something in PDF as it does if I had a book in my hand. i.e. it's slow. PDF means you PRINT the book. IT IS NOT AN EBOOK IF YOU PRINT IT. E means electronic, not mechanical paper. the text is blurry and the scrolling is horrible to watch, the EBOOK is meant to be NON-Electronic. Does this make sense, an electronic book made to be non electronic? I am not making fun of ebooks, but rather the fact that ebooks have anything to do with PDF.
PDF protects your document. Really, how do people edit PDF files then, and modify items.. and how come all these PDF to html converters? There is no real protection, just as there is no real computer safety. Why can I cut and paste everything in a PDF document (mind you , a painful experience) and get the content out of PDF.. how is this protection, or what in the devil are you claiming as protection.
This is great, just great: Once it is in PDF, it's in PDF and nothing can be done with it. Great, how do you see this as an advantage? (see above for more). 'If I took my dog and shot it with a large rifle, and said "once it's shot, it's dead" how would this benefit the general population?' But I can cut and paste the dog's pieces after it's dead, and try to make it look like a live dog again, some how, maybe in HTML or DOC format. So I shot it, but the ultimate goal is to reincarnate it into another being. That sounds efficient and logical. The advantages are: None, none, and .. yes that's correct, none.
Searching and avoiding: Every time I use google, I find myself clicking on the "view as html" link if I dare need to see a "PDF website" (a PDF website.. what next, Fax Machine websites? reinventing HTML 101). Gee, I wonder why that is, that I click on the "view as html", and why do I visit OTHER businesses websites, who DON'T use PDF.. before the businesses that do use PDF? because someone was reinventing html? Every business website that I have been to using PDF, has mistakenly used PDF in a situation where html could have been used. News and products. At a website, online... news and products..... online, online, PDF. PDF and online, don't mix. ONLINE means HTML, on my computer in my browser (don't get me started on IE and PDF in t he browser).
Business site using PDF: Download our brochure of our products, print it off your computer, then throw it out. Then come back to our website later, and buy from us. But on our website, we don't' have the products listed, you have to go back into your garbage can, find our email address on the brochure, then type the email address into your computer (after opening your email client), and also you may not even remember our website, since the brochure was after all in the garbage can, and your printer ink just ran out, because our corporate logo drained your color ink cartridges.. all for one reason: so we could try and sell you products, that you could have seen on your CRT or LCD monitor for free, and fast. Don't bother looking at those PDF files on your monitor, because they are slow, delete that PDF file off your computer, because it's quite large. Wait, wait.. you want me to delete the file, which has your business information in it, off my PC?
Also, when you have ADOBE open, be sure to close your mail client, and all the other programs you have open. So you 'can't' email us while you are looking at our PDF file, since you'll close all those programs to make room for the Boeing 747 Adobe bloat. A Boeing 747 carrying one envelope in it, with some text inside. Waste gallons of petrol just to get a simple text message across to me. Adobe takes up quite a bit of CPU and memory, so you don't want anything open, therefor I'll insist again that you do not use email clients (ruins the point of contact between business and customer, since the email address of the business will be on the PDF file) You should print that PDF file off your printer, then type in our email address, probably. That's easy enough, we wouldn't want to make it extra work for you.
On a "no PDF" website, you'll have some html pages, order forms, products displayed with info, and "bookmark us" buttons on the main page. On the PDF website, this converts into: almost no html, just a bunch of whacked pages with "download this PDF" buttons everywhere. The PDF buttons themselves are a large image file, and the pages are bloated with PDF bragging all over. As a customer, one has to wonder if they are selling PDF, or if they are selling a product that I want to buy? They don't even have an Adobe affiliate link anywhere! If they were that ludicrous and idiotic to have at least PDF affiliate links and banners everywhere, I'd fell better about them than their current irrationality!
Download this chunky file, print off our brochure, throw it out, find our email address, find our phone number, write it down on a pad of paper, and remember our url which is also on the PDF form, then when you need those email addresses, there's no way of getting them into the clipboard easily, cause you already deleted are large PDF file, they are all safe and sound on your paper. Defying the laws of computers, these PDF websites want us to use pencil and paper, or printer ink, to get an email address typed into the computer. Is there something wrong with that equation. Remember you must also go through the devil of installing PDF too, if you don't have it" Oh, and PDF is Free, too. HTML, however, is not. RTF, is not. Wait, wait.. maybe they are. But, the advantage of PDF, you see, is that it's Free. Free, safety, protection, cross platform, all these words and more, it's like they pulled them right out of their AlphaBitSoup? and displayed them on their spoons just to scam you.
When you fill out or want to make notes about our products - in PDF format, sorry honey, you are out of luck sir! our documents are protected. You can go through the hell of cutting and pasting them into some text editor, but that will be a laugh for you since all the formatting will be nil and everything will be screwed up, and you'll have to re read the text to find where you were looking (i.e. reinventing a text file or doc, or RTF.. opening the PDF file only to find out you really need to get it over into a DOC or RTF editor). That's what our protection does, you see, it makes it hard for you to communicate and purchase from our business, which is exactly, and precisely our main goal. Eventually, you will need to get back to our website, and the PDF is no help there, since you should have closed you browser, and clicking on any links, if there are any in this PDF file you have open may cause problems, since PDF being open and a browser being re fired up (wasted bandwidth) might cause a lock up, due to the CPU and memory required. Protected from what? Protected and safety are scam words, enticing words. They don't' mean anything with computers. Computer safety, and oxymoron is the same as PDF protection. There isn't any PDF protection and there's nothing really to protect (imagine, html protection, plastic water bottle protection, light bulb and door knob protection... is this just a bunch of BS, words to make you feel safe? Define safe, and what are you going to do about it really?)
So the protection makes things worse, doesn't protect anything or anyone, and causes even more confusion and trouble. 500 points for me, none for PDF.
Got an old laptop, going on the road- just using a laptop, because you own one? Here ditches the cross platform advantage (and there is no advantage, even without this proving, because RTF, HTML, etc.) People use older laptops, if we all had new laptops, we'd have hundreds of them wouldn't we.. since new laptops do come out every week at least. And these laptops don't run adobe.. if they do run adobe, they pretty much don't because of crashing when a program isn't meant for a laptop with a slightly older CPU - and all laptops normal sane people own are older ones, no one buys a new laptop every week.
You're out of luck! your laptop is barely able to install PDF without crashing, because it requires a top of the notch system, just to read some plain text, but more importantly, our flashy corporate logo embedded into the PDF file.. that's the real winner there, our corporate logo is in fact what is important and what makes you purchase from us - NOT the content or product quality, or ease of ordering! Oh and we are cross platform... we can't run on your laptop there, we can really only run on the top of the notch PC, and we are cross platform remember! laptops are not a platform! No, they are aliens from the planet Venus. Our toolbars in the PDF viewer are so big, that the laptop screen couldn't read your PDF files anyway, without spending 6 hours just scrolling around.
Funny thing is, all the brochures I pick up at news stands, I just end up throwing out. Whereas if a company gave me a binder of useful info (i.e. a proper, fast website) I'd spend all my money with this company. So the last thing I am going to do when I print off all these pages of bloaty text, is put them in a folder to refer back to, why would I do that when I could just go to someone's website (i.e. a competitor business, that didn't use PDF)
It is not PDF that bothers me. If PDF is useful, for say some odd situation ( at the end of this reading you will find, that no, there is "no useful", but play along with me... if, if if ) where I need my pages blurry on my PC screen, with a slow search facility, and I have the advantages of it's accurate printing (is it really accurate though, or is the printer hardware a huge factor in that, see more in my rambling below) then that's great. But the people who use PDF in place of HTML, have to realize, that HTML, is HTML. PDF is not HTML. When you need a page blurry text with a slow search facility, then you can use PDF, but why are you using PDF on the internet, when the whole purpose of the internet is to get my credit card entered into your website, not into a PDF file? Or to load web pages. Yes, web pages, that's what the internet does. Not corporate embedded non dynamic fixed heavy bandwidth PDF.
For the businesses out there who use PDF for mail applications or mail order: internet means electronic, not printing off magazines.. if I wanted a magazine, I'd get you to send me one for free (all businesses send catalogues to customers free, or most anyway).. why in the Insanehell would I waste printer ink printing out a magazine, on my expense? Oh! but you can read our PDF file electronically, silly! No, Joe, I can't because remember, the main purpose of PDF is to print, reading is NOT enjoyable.. blurry text, scrolling.. so NO you did not give me the PDF file to READ you gave it to me to PRINT, all the boasts about PDF are to PRINT not to read, so why are you intending me to READ PDF, and why isn't HTML the one a sane person would like to read? What is the purpose of the internet business(i.e. electronic) without electronic ordering (i.e. credit cards, real time, not mail form in PDF format) If in some rare case I was doing a large purchase (credit card not allowed), and had to mail a payment, it would be a purchase order done with a template in a complex word processor, a spreadsheet, or some complex system that allowed me to make a quick purchase order up and fax or mail to the business. Where does PDF come in?
Fine, PDF has it's positive points too though. But didn't we just disprove all of them?
Say you needed someone to send a bank application in. Wait though, what does PDF has to do with this? Who says someone couldn't make an application up that used high quality JPEG scans and optical character recognition (essentially what PDF is, OCR and an image). Why? well, again, PDF is a fad. People use it because Adobe must be right. Adobe can't be wrong, they made that wonderful adobe photoshop, so they must be right. Everyone is using PDF, so they must be right. Everybody drinks coke, so they must be right. If I jam OCR up with a JPEG, that's essentially all PDF does, but since PDF is the fad, it must do something! it's a name brand!
If PDF does have a use (if it's not just a OCR and a jpg rammed together, and it does have some useful features.. if... if..) that is NOT the reason PDF is mainly faulty. People claim it's a great way of printing ebooks, which is an oxymoron, they claim it's not good for reading pages, since text is blurry and scrolling is not pleasant, yet this program is called "reader". What part of reader, don't you understand? Not good for reading, call it "reader". The reason PDF is faulty is the PEOPLE who use PDF and take part in this asinine fad. They are using it in the wrong application all over the web, but yet when the want to use it in the supposed "right application", there seems to be lacking a real truthful purpose.
I'm lazy, I come home from work, I want to get online, maybe even purchase something quick. Maybe I'll even fire up my mp3 player today, but that's it. The last thing I want, is to have to fire up a PDF reader, after I've just committed to myself that all I wanted to do was browse the web and open a MP3. I'm tired from work, there's no way I need anything else open, the browser is all I need. But I am forced with this PDF, to defy my natural wants. I must risk overloading my PC now to open the PDF file at this website. No, wait, I could just walk out of this website, and find a reasonable site that uses a nice fast database to store their products.Oh, and better yet, only the overpriced companies use PDF, so I'll get a better deal at another website too. We've just detoured a customer, because our prices our high, to cover our adobe writer licenses, our web page isn't a real web page, we aren't electronic, we are PDF.
Oh, but all these colorful brochures of our products. We have many brochures that we need customers to see. We need to scan them and get them online. Really? Do you know what the purpose of the internet is for? People could care less about a brochure selling products with fancy slow graphics. People want a useful, fast, easy to get around website. A website is like a binder. A binder contains useful information. A brochure is a disposable useless item (ever pick up those car brochures, just to go home and throw them out and check the internet to do real research on your car?)
Imagine going to ebay website, and each auction was a PDF file. Why not? Doesn't this make sense? in fact, isn't an auction the perfect candidate for a nice snazzy PDF file? Can you seriously imagine ebay auctions as PDF files? If other businesses are using PDF, why in the world wouldn't we use PDF in place of HTML all together? It is so fabulous, it does all these wonderful things. Can someone point out the missing factor here? Maybe stupidity? Downloading a PDF file just to see an ebay auction? That's essentially what businesses are doing. I go to businessA and download their product brochure. This is the same as going to an ebay auction in PDF format. The end result is someone trying to sell something. But people don't use PDF on ebay because they don't think it's fast. What is the missing brain cell, or what is the brain damage in businesses these days? I am still wondering, why ebay auctions are not in PDF format! PDF is great, for everything, remember! It has no disadvantages, NONE! Everybody uses it, it works! There is no point in html, PDF has so many features!
Business worry:
But we would have to type all our brochures and pages out without the wondrous help of our PDF!
JPEG with OCR, or just a DOC brochure without all the uneditable (what people want) mess of a brochure. You want people to fill in forms on your website, not print off brochures and pen in their name. Otherwise, the internet wouldn't have any purpose (i.e. electronic data). What in the world are you offering brochures on the web for anyway, when people are on the net for online browsing content? Companies send free catalogues out to customers and please them, you don't ask the customer to incur heavy ink printing costs just so you can sell them something, or force them to put on bifocals and binoculars just to read your blurry PDF pixels.
I wish I could have written this IN PDF (this post) just to tick people off. Imagining having to open up a PDF file just to read this post, only to find out that the post was just text, with a corporate logo on it (corporation is "Anti-PDF Company and Friends"). Would you have done that, or would you have clicked the "view as html", only to find out the html parsing was malarkey and the text was unorganized, sparse, and unreadable?
Does that sound like sound business?
Hmm, when is the last time you have been to someone's personal website, that uses PDF. Is this just a corporate stupidity floating around? Sure you'll have the odd person with an ebook that they created in PDF, but do you see homepages, and pictures of people's dogs, houses, computers in PDF format? What makes a business use PDF, and why would a business be any different than a personal website's method of "getting the info across"? In reality, there are no businesses. We deal with people. If I go to a website and I am flustered with corporate crap (corporate logos, corporate images, text and fonts that match the corporate logo .. all in PDF format) am I dealing with a real person, or am I dealing with some scam/fad business? People want to deal with people. So if I go to a personal website to check out my friend's pictures and blogs, I want to go to a business website and get the same feeling, just different content.. pictures of what I am going to buy and a personal description and personal recommendation.. Where do I ever want to fire up Adobe, and download a PDF file, in this process? Why don't you just get me to cut and paste an email address too from your PDF file.
Do you think I want to do the work of cutting and pasting text from a slow bloaty application, or do you think I want to grab text from my browser, and put it in my browser. Businesses are now confusing PDF as a web browser too. Let's put url's inside our PDF files, and email addresses, and some of those won't even be hot linked. Our customers will have to manually cut and paste these links and email addresses and do more work, opening up their clients (browsers and email)
Getting an address out of a PDF file: I want to mail a simple letter to a company. I open up my PDF reader, and here is their address. Great, now I have to close PDF, which just burned 50MB of my memory. Now I have to open up my word processor and paste the address in there, then print it. Businesses are confusing PDF reader as a word and text editor.
The business strategy:
Businesses want to put more workload on the customer, so the customer runs away from their business as fast as he can, and never purchases from them. The customer goes to another website, that doesn't use PDF, but has a lot of speed and fast optimized web code, the customer is able to make a purchase within minutes with his card, never even thinking about PDF. But, we have to use PDF because everyone else uses it.
HTML isn't cross platform! JPEG isn't cross platform! RTF isn't cross platform, OCR isn't cross platform! Oh, wait it is. But PDF, is cross platform! So it has that advantage, you know? DuhBowinkle?
But wait, there still is something that's just got to be good about PDF! What about all those home users out there who have the 200 pound laser printers.. Those ones with the post script in them. Home users like to have big printers that print 600 pages of tax forms (more like a bubble jet 10e printing 5 pages of tax forms). Got to be lots of those home users out there with the big 200 pound printers that use post script. The ones with post script you know? Mm, gee, maybe people at home don't run paper mill businesses, so maybe we don't have those 200 pound printers, eh PDF? But wait, you can download more bloatware, just to simulate sending PDF to a printer that doesn't accept PDF, and it might even print the page close to center, or slightly off center, and the fonts might be mucked up just a bit too! (i.e. ReinventingTheWheel, a broken one, going backwards, DoingWrong?, BeingRetarded?).
Questions:
If PDF is so great:
why not use it to make home pages?
If sliced bread is so great, why not use it to make chicken salad? PDF is not for screen-oriented hypertext documents.
why not use it to make websites? Why use html at all? Use it to read email too! That would be delightfully enjoyable.
why buy desktop printers? Why not buy 3000watt laser printers, even if you have a laptop?
Pardon? What's your point? If PDF is great, then you must buy a big, expensive printer?
why shop on ebay in html? Wouldn't a nice brochure fit better for an auction, since all businesses use brochures? ... Auctions are perfect for brochures.
why have a word processor at all, why not just write directly in adobe "reader"? (HahHah? that's a really good one.)
why have PDF ebooks, if they aren't meant to be ebooks? PDF means you PRINT the book. IT IS NOT AN EBOOK IF YOU PRINT IT and nothing about it is electronic. E means electronic, not paper and ink like a real book.
I regularly read entire books in PDF format. I also regularly read entire books in HTML format. I'd never print either. I'd never waste time and money to convert into a largely inferior format.
why does PDF boast about printing, and call their product reader...? and people complain that PDF is not good for reading, it's for printing. I do not see any common sense here.
why protect a format, when the ultimate goal is to modify it, and how is the term protection valid when there is "copy and paste" available (i.e. you could boast about how a JPEG is good text protection method too)? I guess the sales pitch and hype with PDF takes over your mind, even if the reasoning behind the whole scheme is scam. You could even advertise JPEG as "safer than PDF! no copy and paste"...
You don't modify PDFs. You modify LaTeX source, Adobe InDesign? files, OpenOffice documents and the like. When you make a PDF, you can choose if a user will be allowed to copy&paste from it. Of course not in a secure way. Making a format for distribution of text that doesn't allow the text to be copied is like making water that is not wet. It can't realisticly be done, but it's good that the restrictions are in place officialy because it makes pointy haired bosses less reluctant to provide 'intellectual property' in digital form.
why use PDF just because "it works"? Would you use a comb to brush your teeth if that worked somewhat?
Okay okay, if PDF works so badly, what format exactly would work better?
I don't understand, the intent of PDF being safe and protected, as they call it, since it isn't safe, or protected more than a JPEG - since you can copy and paste, in PDF. And what exactly is safety, isn't that just a word that teases people, into thinking good thoughts, when actually is just a scam? You money is safe, safe neighborhood, your computer is safe.
Everyone wants to copy and paste items from PDF back into some other program, text, doc, RichTextFormat... isn't this like reinventing the wheel. Download our slow program, so that you can struggle and ultimately copy and paste all of what you need into some other program, and you have no formatting so it's worse than RTF, but PDF was supposed to be better than RTF.
If I want to copy plain text out of a document that is supposed to contain nothing but plain text, then maybe it was a mistake to choose PDF as format for this particular document. That's a fault of the author, not a fault of the PDF format. OTOH if I want to copy plain text out of a document that is supposed to present, say, a scientific paper in a way that looks nice, is easy to read, has good-looking figures and tables, then PDF would be a very good choice. Maybe XHTML would be an even better choice, because it has structural markup and I could copy out some text with emphasis, subscripts and the like intact. But then there are no XHTML rendering engines that produce output with such a high quality as LaTeX does. This will hopefully change, but today you can't have all at once, you have to choose, and often PDF is a good choice.
Again, PDF ceases to hold one advantage over all other technology, and when it does hold any potential advantage (i.e. post script for customers with no post script printers, printing accuracy for printers who'd hardware aren't accurate enough to accept the accuracy anyway) it is not a real advantage, hence no advantage at all. Claim big advantages, ask questions, and in reality, there really is no advantage, it's just a disgusting sick corporate roundabout fad.
Yesterday a man across the road came and told my wife that she'd parked in front of his bedroom window, which faces onto the path by the roadside - "could you please not park there, in front of my bedroom. Particularly as the car was left there all day." - It would appear that YOU, like that gentleman, have no life, and entirely too much time on his hands. GET A JOB, and put something worthwile back in. Oh, and I think pdf's are ok, 'til the next 'big thing' that is.
Wow. That was long. Also reptetive. By the way, calling something a "fad" is not an insult. A fad is a short lived phenomena. And it's very simple why you'll find documents in PDF format - because when the original document is designed to be printed, it's trivial to create a PDF. It's more work. In many cases, it's a LOT more work. It's just that simple. The vast majority of PDFs you stumble across are either formal publications or brochureware. Both of them are designed for print. PDF is the simplest way of getting them into a digital format.
Thanks for that - I could see no reason for using PDF, since it takes so long to load on my machine. It is because people want wysiwyg printing. What the hell are they still printing in 2005. We have been trying to reduce the need for paper for thirty years (at least I used to believe that). I hate PDF. Just another interface style to tolerate. What happened to the PaperlessOffice?? And if it is all that portable, how come it renders so badly in HTML format? --PeterLynch
I can see no reason ... it is because people want ...
Make up your mind.
because people want wysiwg printing
...and people want to read a document without having to print it. And applications want to describe the appearance of items for display on the monitor, the model in Mac OS X.
What the hell are they still printing in 2005. [sic]
Books, money, tickets, maps, pamphlets, newspapers, handbills, posters, manuals to use when your display devices don't work, receipts, invoices, death certificates, ... Come back when displays are as light, as portable, and have a similar power consumption to a sheet of paper. Until then, this sort of argument is foolish.
We have been trying to reduce the need for paper for thirty years (at least I used to believe that).
What do you mean we, white man?
If it is all so portable, how come it renders so badly in HTML format?
If a dinghy is such a useful watercraft, why does it sink when I fill it with concrete?
What do you mean "renders badly in HTML format?" HTML doesn't render anything.
Legitimate PDF uses
While PDF is mostly used unnecessarily, there are instances where the presentation really should be conserved or where, due to the wide availability of PDF readers, a PDF file is accessible to more potential readers than any other viable option. This doesn't mean, of course, that PS couldn't do it all at least as well, if everyone used ghostscript.
Legitimate usage contexts for text documents would include the following stories:
As of 2006, PDF is the most universally used digital exchange format for sheet music - the main reasons being:
No-one seems to have challenged the suggestion above that PS is better than PDF 'in all cases'. This isn't true, mostly because PDF is (more or less) declarative while PS is a complete programming language. PDF isn't a subset of PS - it's parsed similarly, but PDF has a richer set of base commands to compensate for the fact that you can't define your own later. It's relatively simple, for example, to write a program that scans a PDF and pulls out all the text positioning and writing commands; which is the first step in searching the document. With PS, on the other hand, you need to have a fully functional PS interpreter to start with. PS has issues with infinite loops, stack overflow, etc., that don't happen in PDF.
PDF does have a facility for using plugins. Adobe's reader is pretty much the only one that uses them, which is why it's so much slower than (for example) Preview on the Mac, or XPDF/Poppler - watch the text on the splash screen at startup. You can download tools to disable these, it makes Acrobat Reader *much* faster. However, in the main, PDFs do not rely on extensions or scripting, unlike PS, Word, HTML+JS, LaTeX, ... which actually makes it a more reliable format for document archiving than pretty much anything else; and because of the lack of full programming capability you can 'pre-flight' check PDFs for compliance with standards that mandate NO extensions at all (PDF/X).
Perhaps there is an inherent trade-off between "semantic" formatting and WYSIWYG formatting. In semantic formatting there is the potential that a given client (output device) may display something different from another client to adjust for screen-size etc. However, in pure WYSIWYG this wouldn't happen because things would essentially be coordinate-based (or at least "hard" percentages) so that the document/content is the same no matter where or how it's displayed. But this risks losing or damaging semantic information. The author will be editing mostly based on appearance, not semantics. For example, a paragraph may accidentally get split in two, but the author may not know because they are proof-reading it based on what they see, and a page break or image embedding and a specific paragraph spacing of zero may be hide this fact. Thus, the "proper" semantics tends to get lost or damaged. This is usually "fine" under the pure WYSIWYG assumption, but not under the semantic formatting assumption where appearance may be adjusted situationally.
Most users prefer WYSIWYG in my observation because it's clear what you are going to get and human beings like to stick things exactly where they want them and have them stay there, but this conflicts with web philosophy, which is mostly semantic-based, making web-based self-authoring a pain in the tushy. It's good job security for web-masters who will be babysitting web formatting issues, but is not the ideal from a larger economic standpoint. The idealism of the web standards makers is well-intended, but not fit for normal human consumption: it's too high-brow for most. Yes, I am yet again defending "mid-brow workers" because that's what exists and that's what the industry wants tools to cater too. Our tools need to be designed around the fact that HumansSuck. -t
See also ScreenFriendlyPdf
Compare with HyperTextMarkupLanguage, LaTex, PlainText, PostScript, RichTextFormat
EditText of this page
(last edited August 16, 2013)
or FindPage with title or text search