On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 17:00:50 PM -0400, James Knott wrote: > Larry Gusaas wrote: > >Why would your want to get rid of PDF's. I DO NOT want to publish > >documents in ODF formats? I use read only PDF's.
Larry, may I ask you why you specifically used "DO NOT want" in the sentence above, instead of "do not need" or something like that? I'm curious, also for the reasons in my comments below. On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 17:00:50 PM -0400, James Knott wrote: > Published documents should be PDF or epub. PDF is useful when you > want to maintain control over the layout. Hmm, not exactly. PDF is little more than a photograph of the _printable_ version of a document (or a video, in some cases). As such, it is useful when you want, or need, or it's enough, that the "exterior" parts of a document _can_ always have exactly the same look on every monitor, or however they are printed. This is quite different from "read-only". It's funny how many people still believe that PDF is read-only, given that Acrobat and other tools do let people edit PDF files all right, or that there is plenty of tutorials on, for example, "how to create your own interactive PDF that clients can fill out, edit and submit an email back to you": http://www.thedesigncubicle.com/2008/12/how-to-create-interactive-pdf-forms-to-impress-your-clients/ searches for "how to edit PDF" or "PDF forms" give plenty of other examples. If the goal is to tell people "when you print this file it will look just the same as it did when I printed it myself" OK, PDF is adequate. But if what one really wants is to tell viewers of a document "this is the original file I produced and put online" digital signatures must be used. Besides, just because PDF was **designed** to be little more of a photograph etc... it is not reflowable, that is readable without scrolling all the time. Text paragraphs and columns won't be adjusted to the size of the screen as it would happen with an ePUB file, making reading long texts on a small screen much harder than it could be. Finally: > ODT should be used when you want the recipient to be able to change > the documet. No. These days, ODF should be used ALSO whenever you want or need that the recipient be able to _see_ the internal structure of a document. Cfr the specific example that I already made about open government and documents like public budget spreadsheets. In those cases, citizens need immediate access to the _formulas_ that generated the final numbers. Apart from spreadsheets, these days you can find lots of fully documented and justified rants by open government/open data activists that explain how and why PDF royally SUCKS as (the only) format for published public documents. Summing up: PDF is really "read-only" only in a dream PDF is fully adequate only when the ONLY wanted or allowed use of a file is to send it right away to the closest printer. Publishing _also_ PDF is harmless. Publishing _only_ PDF is quickly becoming less and less acceptable in many contexts, from Public Administrations to mobile devices, for the reasons above. Regardless of the file format and of the operating system, a full "office suite" on devices without decent screens and keyboards is probably a waste of resources, but hey, if anybody goes and makes it OK. An ODF viewer instead, which is the only thing I personally suggested/approved, is good on all platforms, but there are already projects to start from. It's probably more efficient to improve them than to force AOO to become a viewer though. Marco http://mfioretti.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
