[NatCh]

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

My point was that the question was poorly phrased.

Fair enough, but if you mean the question attached to the actual poll, that's pretty harshly limited in length, I tried to expand on it in the first post, and I think I got a bit closer, though nothing approaching Kovid's excellent phrasing.

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

The question of PDF's legitimacy is a much less subjective question than one on "the suitability of rendered ebook formats as a general purpose ebook format," which is the primary debate of this thread.

The original question was whether individual people consider PDF to be a legitimate e-book format. It's hard to get more subjective than people's opinions.

The discussion has taken rather a few twists and turns since then, however, and I'm perfectly happy with that, as it was kinda what I had in mind: to see where it would go.

Originally Posted by SpiderMatt

I mostly just wanted people to look at the word choice in the topic question. Just because a person thinks PDF shouldn't be used as a primary ebook format, doesn't mean it isn't "legitimate."

And I guess my counter point is that just because something can be made to serve a particular function doesn't establish its legitimacy to serve that purpose.

If the definition of whether something is legitimately an e-book format is based solely upon whether it can be used that way ... then a hammer is a legitimate screw-driver (more people have done this than will likely admit to it ), and MacGyver was a legitimate nuclear engineer because he could fix a fission reactor with a chewing gum wrapper and a length of surgical tubing.

Legitimacy is more than just utility. I chose the word legitimate deliberately because it means what it means, as opposed to one like viable or usable.

The fact that PDF can be made to work as an e-book isn't the question, and was never disputed.

But I don't see that the fact that it can be used that way is really an answer to the question of whether it should be considered well suited for that purpose.