Sorry you think it "makes no sense". It makes lots of sense to those of us who have to use it a lot for more than just reading random documents. And it sure PRETENDS to be a lot more than just a way to PRINT a document (and even then, it's hardly as portable as it would like to pretend it is).
Viz.: Attempts at markup. Horrible navigation. Bugs galore (not as bad as, say, Flash, but there have been plenty of security issues with PDF). Inability to extract data coherently, even as plaintext (and yes, I mean when the document isn't marked as being un-copyable--another extension beyond what you claim is its entire charter). Overall, it was a nice idea when all it did was let you view and print stuff reasonably close to the original in most cases. It's long past that, and poorly designed, a hodgepodge (or hotch-potch, as our British cousins might say). On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 2:39 PM, J R <[email protected]> wrote: > PDF captures the presentation format intended and dictated by the original > word processor (both the author of the document and the software) and makes > it portable. It has no intention of enabling reformat. As such, it does > an excellent job. Criticism of PDF makes no sense. > > === > > > Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 10:02:44 -0500 > > From: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: Redesigning the Principles of Operation Manual > > To: [email protected] > > > > Funny, I tend to think that something with the word "format" in its name > > can be called a format. Call it what you will--PDF is grim. Yes, we all > use > > it all the time, but it's remarkably primitive. > > > > On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 8:51 AM, Robin Vowels <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > From: "zMan" <[email protected]> > > > Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 11:16 AM > > > > > > > > > If Adobe PDF wasn't such a crappy format, it would be easy to program > it > > >> to > > >> filter those grafs so you could select just the grande instructions > (or > > >> whatever), the number of columns, etc. In the meanwhile, great > example! > > >> > > > > > > PDF isn't a "format" > > > > > > PDF stands for Portable Document Format. > > > > > > All it does is make it possible to print a given document on any > computer > > > and have it print exactly the same as the originator (regardless of > what > > > fonts are on/not on the computer). > > > > > > The problem you need to address is the originator of the document. > > > > > > Anyway, if you print the PoPs (PDF) document you will have something > that > > > you > > > can read easily. > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" > > > -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it"
