On 9/25/07, Frank Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > marbux wrote: > I don't want to get into an argument about the pros and cons of > PDF publishing on the web but you're publishing to the web, not to the > desktop. The web is a more flexible publishing medium with many > possible user setups regarding orientation, screen size, color depth, > etc. Not to mention accessibility problems with PDFs (unless you're > using tagged PDF).
Sorry I left a misimpression. I'm not advocating the use of PDF instead of HTML + for web publishing. I was tackling it from the standpoint of a decision already made and how to best design PDFs within that context. > -- Fonts can be embedded so readers get the document designer's intended > > graphical effect; > > -- Web and dead-tree publishing can use the same document without > > reformatting; > > But they *need* reformatting because one format cannot satisfy all > channels: > Web on computer screens, printouts, screen readers, small devices. Again, I'm sorry I was not more clear. I was listing some of the advantages, not intending to imply that there are no disadvantages. The disadvantages are profound enough that I don't do web documents in PDF myself. As a former typographer for 20 + years, I'm a fan of simple web document layout to work around the limitations imposed by different web browser's different rendering of complex layout. Liberal use of white space, scant variation in type sizes, and scalable vector graphics. Pushing the medium to do things it isn't well designed for is in my opinion a big mistake. And from my perspective, fewer than 1 in 10,000 web page designers have even basic knowledge of tyographical design principles. The Web is a painful experience for those who do. It's ugly out there. You're (well not literally you :-) using landscape PDF to the advantage > of screen display but to the disadvantage of printout. You even fix > the paper size (A4 in Europe, letter in the US) that often causes > problems on printout. You're using a fixed width and layout that may > force people with small screen resolutions to scroll the document or scale > it > down, but to the advantage of an aesthetic printout. > > A see the beauty of completely controlling all visual aspects of > a publication but the internet is just not the best medium for that as > long as there are browsers that don't adhere to standards. I couldn't agree more. Were I emperor of the world, graphical web browsers would never have been permitted. Putting powerful typographical tools in the hands of those who had served no apprenticeship in the trade has resulted in a World Wide Web that is an aesthetic garbage dump. I can't over-emphasize just how ugly the Web is to those who were trained in the 500-year-old oral tradition of typography before computer automation came along and eliminated the trade. The world lost something very precious, in the blink of a decade or so. I've often fantasized about starting a web site that features other web sites so ugly that euthanasia is the only rational response. :-) But it's a lost cause. I see perhaps one or two web sites a year that employ such basic techniques as establishing a page focal point. Ugly has triumphed. The war was lost long ago. BUCK "MARBUX" MARTIN Director of Legal Affairs OpenDocument Foundation Contact: <http://www.opendocumentfoundation.us/contact.htm> -- Universal Interop Now!
