[CLUE-Talk] PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Mon, 2003-07-14 at 19:33, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> I found myself saying, Halleluja! as I read this.
> 
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html
> 
> Do you folks find it annoying when you run across PDF?  In certain
> settings, it is nice (something like an IRS form or the like), but most
> of the time they drive me nuts.  They may be a nice option for
> downloading a printable version of an otherwise HTML-based page.

It really depends on what I'm looking for. PDFs don't annoy me so much,
it's unnecessary Flash crap that bugs me... 

Any document that's shorter than four pages, and meant for Web
publishing, should be in HTML -- at least that's my feeling. Anything
longer than ten pages, I'd prefer to find it in PDF... particularly
reference materials, since I'd like to have an easy-to-download format
so I can just save it to the hard drive -- I hate bookmarking a great
reference and then going back two weeks later and it has disappeared. 

Of course, any decent publishing tool should allow a "save as HTML" and
"save as PDF" without having to choose between the two formats.

> I absolutely hate PDF when I am searching for something on Google, and I
> have to download a PDF to read something that could have very easily
> been HTML.
> 
> I suspect a lot of folk, many of whom are print-oriented, like the
> absolute page control that the PDF offers.  Sadly, this is indicative of
> a simple fact:  these folks do not grok the web.

Or, perhaps, publishing content on the Web is a secondary concern. When
government offices, for example, publish content in PDF, it's probably
because it was intended for print publishing first, and electronic
publishing is secondary. 

I'll take PDF over Word docs any day...

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net