Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I must disagree. PDFs are excellent for the task they were designed for, which is to be a digital representation of the printed page. As such, they are a very good method indeed for preserving digitised versions of specific printed books (ie “page scan” PDFs. In my field of academia, Egyptology, PDFs provide an excellent digitising format for books which are long out of print. Many of the books I refer to frequently are widely disseminated in PDF format and would otherwise be available only in major university libraries.
PDFs “work” very well indeed on large-screen tablets such as an iPad. Long live PDF!
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You need to reread what I wrote Harry, I never said anything about PDFs being bad for their initial design purpose, now did I? I only criticized their usefulness for the contemporary uses for which they have been adapted. They really do suck for software manuals, books, and other documentation being produced in an era where new documentation is written on computers. On the other hand, PDFs are okay for old books that have never been digitized, legal documents, and other such documents, but by okay I mean they are readable. However they still suck when viewed on a lot of devices because they have non-flowing text which makes for awkward reading on many devices.