[CLUE-Talk] PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

[Jeffery Cann]

On Tuesday 15 July 2003 08:36 am, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> * Jeffery Cann (fabian at jefferycann.com) wrote:
> > On Monday 14 July 2003 07:33 pm, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > I totally disagree (not that I like PDFs particularly).  IMHO, the
> > *reason* PDFs became popular is because unlike the browser war bs, you
> > can count on a PDF looking the same, no matter which OS you're running.
> >
> > In the *early days* of the web, CSS was not around, so page display and
> > layout were pretty much up to the whims of the browsers.  Of course, none
> > of them did it the same and saps like me spent hours working out stupid
> > display incompatibilities among popular browsers.
> >
> > People who cared about their company's image turned to PDFs for brochures
> > and such because they wanted consistency.  I think they grok'd the web -
> > and it's (then) limitations.
>
> Jeff, When you talk about a company brochure, then I can understand.
> Something that existed in print form before, and that has a specific
> page layout and image, is acceptable to provide as a PDF.  But not
> *only* as a PDF.
>
> However, if one is using the web, and one thinks that the exact
> placement of one's company logo on the screen, and the exact font, and
> the exact ... are required to protect your company image, then I would
> say that one does not grok the web.  Even *with* CSS, such ideas are an
> illusion.
>
> So one gets everything perfectly in place, it looks beautiful,
> they're happy.  But one happened to use font X and Y to do so.  Maybe I
> run a minimal Linux system.   Maybe even with just Links.  Now the
> beautiful website turns to mush.  I don't have the right fonts, so it
> can't look good in Mozilla, and often a pure text website is lacking in
> these cases too, so Links looks horrible.  I go somewhere else.  A great
> example of this was (is?) the Nvidia webpage.  Looks super slick in
> Windows under IE, looks like a 4 year old designed it on Linux under Konq
> or Moz.
>
> These are the situations where some web designers resort to Flash
> (common), or just have one download a PDF of a brochure.  And that is a
> failure of the mind, not the technology.  The web is primarily about
> information, not image.  Besides, providing the right information *is*
> good for a company's image, even if one has to sacrfice a little control
> over page layout.
>
> Tim

-- 
"Keep yourselves far from every form of exaggerated nationalism, racism and 
intolerance."
-- Pope John Paul II