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Well, I've had the experience of reading on the subway when the lights in my car went off. I don't think being able to increase the font size would do any more good than muttering a curse against the MTA, which is all one actually does in those circumstances.
I don't play cut-and-paste games with Web-published poetry. They're fine, I suppose, for those who like them---but is it really outrageous that anyone should choose to publish in a form that you can't play cool games with?
My idea of "the big picture" allows for multiple points of view. Including the point of view that distinguishes between the means of production and the product. The end product isn't a dead end to me just because it doesn't embody every possibility of manipulation within itself. I know that PDFs are convertible or reformattable only to a very limited extent. I don't have to do that with the PDFs I make for my own use. I just make changes in the .tex file and recompile it, or in the .rtf file and reconvert it---it's very easily and efficiently done.
As for the producer or buyer of commercial ebooks---perhaps I should say the potential producer or buyer, since there are so few actual ones---I think the same distinction would make perfect sense to most them.
I'm not fixated on PDF or dead set against other formats. I've experimented recently with
converting one of my .tex files to HTML and converting to .lrf, mobi, and .epub formats. The results have been pretty good---pretty much as good, anyway, as most of the .lrf, mobi, and .epub docs I've seen. And, for my taste and purposes, not good enough to make me think of giving up PDF.
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