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Trash Talk - Someone want to tell me why PDF files are around?

Animate Dreams - Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:42 am
Post subject: Someone want to tell me why PDF files are around?

I mean, why introduce a new standard that requires massive Adobe software that eats up my resources? I don't understand at all....

Maverick - Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:19 am
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf

Read and thou will learn

Mine GO BOOM - Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:21 am
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I use Foxit Reader (free) for my PDF reading needs. But the reason they are around, is that they are an open standards system, which means you do not need to use Adobe software for it. I use CutePDF Writer to make PDF and Foxit Reader for viewing. Mac/most Linux distros have build-in PDF creating software. Both also use non-Adobe readers.

Your problem is that you just didn't do any research on PDFs and instead assumed that they are 100% Adobe-only.

Agurus - Mon Sep 04, 2006 11:28 am
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Mine GO BOOM wrote:

MGB you always use cool ass programs (oO)

Cyan~Fire - Mon Sep 04, 2006 12:03 pm
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But still, PDFs are way overused. For example, this assignment sheet. Why not just use HTML?

In my opinion, PDFs are useful only for printed material. They look like crap on the screen anyway.

Dr Brain - Mon Sep 04, 2006 12:38 pm
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PDF is easy for math teachers because they use LaTeX.

i88gerbils - Mon Sep 04, 2006 12:39 pm
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Well, PDFs are already formatted for printing so if you wanted to print say a javascript quantified invoice it is much nicer looking.

One use of PDFs is in insurance. The Acord forms are a standard set of insurance forms that agents can print out directly in their office instead of waitin for a laminated card to be produced.

Animate Dreams - Mon Sep 04, 2006 1:16 pm
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It just seems that between Microsoft Word documents(and all similar formats, such as Star Office or Open Office would use), text documents, html, and Spreadsheets, we already have it covered. Why introduce something new? I haven't seen an advantage yet. The best I can see is that in a couple of cases, it's easier to learn how to modify pdf files instead of learning how to use a spreadsheet or an html editor. But I think by this point, anyone who would NEED to create something like that should just, you know, learn how to do those things the right way. PDF files have not enriched my computing experience in any way, and I can't really imagine they've done so to anyone else. The worst part is how many pdf files you find after googling something, and the website it's reading from is actually just a pdf file. That would be like someone trying to use an .rtf file as a website. Sure it could look a lot the same, but it's just a bad idea.

Dr Brain - Mon Sep 04, 2006 2:44 pm
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PDFs are a typesetting format, something that is not done by HTML or by word processor formats (MS Word in your case). It's absolutely essential when distributing something to be printed to have it look the same on every printer, and that's what PDF does.

You say that it hasn't enriched your computing experience? I can only assume you don't use computers much.

Mine GO BOOM - Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:39 pm
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Now, what if someone send you a document for some proprietary software you don't have for you to be able to print? Oops, sucks to be you. PDF is a standard way of turning anything you can print into one format. Think of PDF as a physical paper, digitialized. Sure, you could send around a huge jpeg scan of the page. But then you can't copy/paste text, because it won't be text, it will be part of an image.

Like all formats, people abuse it. They take screenshots of a program, and save as a lossy jpeg. They make a home movie and save it as a MPEG1 stream and upload it to their company's network shared space. People zip installation programs that already compress the data. They take a picture of their family, import it into a word document, and send it to their friend who still uses dialup.

That assignment sheet could have been done just as HTML. But you know what? That teacher probably used Word, and instead of uploading a word document file (oh, I hated those teachers), they at least converted it to a standard format that any computer can easily get software to view it with.

Trust me, when you are looking up datasheets for random ICs, you love PDF formats. Nothing is better than finding the link to the datasheet's PDF file, as all other formats are just horrible.

D1st0rt - Mon Sep 04, 2006 4:22 pm
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The main feature to a PDF is that it will ALWAYS look the same no matter what you're viewing it on.

What's even cooler than using a separate program for making PDFs is installing Primo PDF as a print driver, so it works with any existing program by just "printing" the document.

Dr Brain - Mon Sep 04, 2006 4:43 pm
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Mine GO BOOM wrote:

That assignment sheet could have been done just as HTML. But you know what? That teacher probably used Word, and instead of uploading a word document file (oh, I hated those teachers), they at least converted it to a standard format that any computer can easily get software to view it with.

Look at the PDF, he used TeX, not Word. And of course PDF is one of the easiest things to generate from a TeX document (right after dvi files, which no one uses). Most of the math teachers I know use TeX for all their documents, and the hardcore ones type the TeX out by hand rather than using some kind of editor.

Bak - Mon Sep 04, 2006 5:10 pm
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it's just as easy to convert TeX to html as it is to convert it to pdf

Dr Brain - Mon Sep 04, 2006 6:02 pm
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For you; not for stodgy old math profs. They don't like exams to print out with the headers and footers that browsers invariably add.

Doc Flabby - Mon Sep 04, 2006 6:45 pm
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Another big advantage of pdfs is they cant be altered easily. And they print out nice whatever the computer. We use them alot at work for these two reasons when sending stuff to clients. Also some of the people we have to send stuff to only accept pdfs

Smong - Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:01 pm
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I like the navigation features in pdf, although I haven't seen many people take advantage of it. For example see the Intel assembly instruction sets and if anyone is mad enough the Palm OS documentation. It's not just clicky areas in the pages, there is a whole contents tree sidebar. Palm has/had excellent documentation, better than Java's webpages and even with cross-pdf links embedded in it.

I also use Foxit, adobe takes even longer than firefox to load.