[CLUE-Talk] PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

[Jef Barnhart]

On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 14:04, Jeffery Cann wrote:
> 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 
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Yea. What he said.;)