Wrote my thesis in latex pdf.
Sure beats writing it in html.
Wrote my thesis in latex pdf.
Sure beats writing it in html.
While your Coding Horror PDF example makes sence, I also think you forget a few things. PDF is self contained, a container format like AVI if you will.
When ODF/OOXML or whichever breaks de-facto standard, it will be the same story bur probably better usability as Browsers will be able to render these files natively and who knows, the whole HTML/CSS mumbo jumbo could be starting to become history - as mere mortals (my dad for instance) could maintain his content.
I actually went the other way around recently. I used to have to maintain two versions of documentation for my project, a web based version (renderable from within a Java JTextArea) and a PDF for bundling with the software and for printing. Since Sun recently open sources a PDF-renderer I am now in the process of converging to only a PDF file. That makes a lot of sence considering that going the other way, printing from HTML, is a bad enough experience to justify it’s own article on Coding Horror.
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.
Wikipedia.
I re-read “Burn Rate” just before Christmas and don’t remember Kevin Kelly. Sure enough, Louis Rossetto is listed the founding editor, not KK.
http://www.wired.com/services/staff?staff=Magazine
Joe Chin: I could create the HTML equivalent but why got through the hassle of copy pasting, recreating stylesheets, converting embedded images to links, and on and on.
Not to mention the slew of bogus HTML tags crapping up the document. It’s a horror to do this with anything in Office because the HTML is downright filthy. When I export something I’d like to have clean markup. It’s actually more sane to create in HTML first, then let Word do the job of conversion since few people care about the structure of Word files.
Book idiosyncracies? No thanks, scrolling vertically is easier.
I also use PDF format to make a statement. However, my statement is that I’m not locked in to using MS Word!
I am in agreement with Mr. Flanagan above: the major motivation for content creators to publish PDF is control. They want control over fonts and layout and width; this is all paper-think foisted upon the web.
I published similar thoughts in 2005:
http://iamacamera.org/default.aspx?section=design/web%20standardsid=15
and a follow-up after Joe Clark challenged my statements
http://iamacamera.org/default.aspx?section=design/web%20standardsid=16
I’m working on a project right now where, for a POP system, we need to generate reports. In this case we are generating them from a client app, and they need to be redistributable - users should be able to save them to a location on their hard drive, and e-mail them to other employees in the company.
We had 4 options: MS Word format, HTML, plaintext, and PDF.
We went with PDF. It’s packaged, and easy for users to transfer via e-mail - it doesn’t look anyone into using MS Office, and it allows us for more stylistic control than plaintext.
PDF has a proper place in the world, but the web ecosystem isn’t it.
I second Malcom. PDFs like that are horrible to read on a computer.
Customers want pdf, just like they want grids instead of lists, and IE support instead of standard-compliant web sites/applications, just like… oh the list goes on and on.
I heard that pdfs are immutable, and that’s why they want them (but you know, pdf writers exist out there…).
No no, in the year 2008 there’s no Good Reason for this pdf fetish that some customers out there have.
I only really use PDF files when I want to take some piece of reading material on my smart phone (Motorola Q9m). Other than that, I think for the most part they are useless, and quite frankly, a lazy way to distribute information.
Jeff,
“The massive inconvenience of PDF for the user…” (bolded, no less)? I click on a link and my PDF reader opens up. That’s “massive inconvenience?” But, I guess you’re talking about the context shift of going from browser to reader. But, then again, you are constantly talking about how you always have dozens of windows open at once. Those context shifts aren’t inconvenient? Yet, one of those windows being a PDF reader is?
Now, having said that, ever since Adobe forced Microsoft to remove PDF support from Office 2007, I’ve been rooting for the death of PDF (and I used to own Adobe stock). Death to PDF! Long live XPS!
The choice to use PDF is almost always a choice to sacrifice ease of use for speed of production. I can print anything to a PDF and post it up online. I don’t even need to be a webhead to do it. Generating nice HTML takes far more time than generating a PDF, ~especially~ when you want to post something that was designed for print layout. The process of converting even a simple print brochure for the web is time consuming and requires technical expertise. Hitting the “Print to PDF” (or better yet, just posting the PDF that the designer has already supplied) is so much easier.
That said, PDF implementation on the web sucks. HTML sucks too, but the tool we use to navigate the web (the browser) was built from the ground up to display HTML. Until the browser natively supports PDF (ha!), or we start using acrobat to browse the web (ha!), PDF and HTML will continue to fight with each other.
There is something that everyone is missing (having said that, I hope it is true… i skimmed over the last 2/3 of the posts, ulp). PDFs were not (as far as I know) invented as an alternative to HTML. They were created to fill a need in the printing industry.
Without getting into sordid details, until the advent of the PDF file, the only (reasonable) alternative for sending layouts to the printer was using Quark files. In the graphics (for print) field, there are 2 kinds of people; Quark people, and Adobe people (who now use Indesign, and used to use pagemaker). Quark makes quark files, indesign makes PDFs.
Once the printers got their hands on the PDF format, there was no going back. Now Quark users have to deal with the hassles of exporting a properly formatted PDF file.
The thing that makes PDF so handy is, the very fact that this discussion exists! I find it not only fascinating, but strangely vitalizing to read a debate about the usefulness of the format, from people who have nothing to do with the printing industry! How far we have come, indeed.
The Portable Document Format is exactly that. Not only can it integrate nearly flawless compression, but it embeds fonts… very very handy for the printing industry. It is useful for the Web… hell, it is useful for nearly anything.
What’s that? Your design needs to be seen in print, distributed on CD, and used on the website? Well, you CAN have the art department make up a Quark file, redesign it for a help file and further redesign it into an HTML page… or, you can just make a PDF file and all your logistical artwork difficulties are solved.
So, anything that you see online as a PDF file, was probably also printed somewhere.
(oops, “Joe Chin on January 3, 2008 02:49 AM” seems to have touched on these thoughts briefly, I should have read more before I suppose)
Now that being said, I must agree with the conscensus here. Too much has been crammed into the format, and the readers are getting out of control. There are too many features; they are getting in the way of it’s actual usefulness.
The downside of it has been well explored in previous posts, I don’t need to be TOO repetitive…
The PLUS side is, there are many PDF readers out there, using the adobe one is unnecessary.
Seems like the standard thread here is that PDF’s are horrible to read/view on a computer. Yep, they are. And (depending on your browser plugin) they are a mode shift for the web surfer…and that is usually a bad thing.
But…
They do allow mere mortals to produce content. I work with a number of luddites (and I mean that with all due respect…) that could never, I mean never, produce anything remotely as “complicated” as an HTML page. Word is the pinnacle of their capabilities. So I’m left either converting their work into HTML or enabling them. Now they’re set up with a PDF converter, that they “print” to, creating a PDF. Now that file can be published to the site, and as someone pointed out, it’s a legal document. Less work for me, they get their goofy fonts (don’t know how many times I’ve tried to explain why we can’t use “BalloonLetterz” font on our website). It does create a different browsing experience, but I believe that’s an Acrobat plugin issue…Safari on my Mac just opens it on another tab, just like an HTML page.
Can Google spiders crawl the content in a PDF?
As usual, good thought provoking post from Atwood!
There’s a huge car crash of people with different outlooks here and yet we’re all managing to scream past each other
People who are design-oriented (esp. print design) tend to love PDF because they know it will always look the same. Tech geeks tend to hate it because they don’t care about things like embedded fonts (even though good design makes things better). There’s nothing wrong with PDF in and of itself, but it feels like 90% of the times it’s used on the web are times when HTML + CSS would be a better choice for all of the reasons Jeff mentioned. This will only be more true as CSS2 and CSS3 print support allows for things like better handling of page breaks, page and chapter numbering, etc.
A few random points:
What are the Mac users crowing about? I have a couple machines running OSX. PDFs pop up in Preview and I have to know to swap over to that. How is that any less jarring than having a browser plugin open in a new tab? Windows can handle PDF files just fine; it’s the experience of opening them that’s a problem.
Adobe != PDF. PDF is an open standard, so I doubt Adobe forced MS to take support for PDF out of Office. That sounds like an Urban Legend.
So the trouble with PDFs is that people are trying to use them to work around the limitations of HTML? That sounds like the trouble with web designers to me. PDF is as good as anything for what it was created for: documents.
I’ve seen a lot of crappy, unreadable HTML on the web. I can’t recall an unreadable PDF.
My annoyance with PDFs, is that when im reading a 600+ page ebook, there is no bookmarking feature in Foxit or Adobe reader. (If im wrong, PLEASE please correct me!)
y do u antiamerican idiots try to put down a great american corporetion like ADOBE? When MIKE HUCKABEE is pres i hope we can outlaw these kinds of “opinion” blogs
I AM A GODFEARING AMERICAN