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Re: [Sheflug] Re: LaTeX
>>>>> "Will" == Will Newton <will [at] misconception.org.uk> writes:
Will> PDF is good for point and drool purposes.
Point in my favor. :-)
Will> It also stops people asking for CVs in f**king MS Word
Will> format.
Point in my favor (anybody who asks for CVs in a format that can't be
handled electronically is someone you find very painful to have as a
boss. ;-)
Will> It's not a bad thing, really.
Used properly. But proper uses for author-controlled formatting are
very limited.
Author-side formatting is a bad thing, because it encourages people
who have all the formatting sense you expect of `cat' to concentrate
on form instead of substance. They should use HTML and let the
browser make it look pretty for them.
Will> The lack of software that generates good PDFs and the poor
Will> quality of Acrobat Reader are not good things...
They are one and the same. When I was actively beta-testing
Ghostscript 1993-1997, most of the release delays and a noticable (but
not as large) fraction of the development effort were devoted to
working around Acrobat bugs that Adobe didn't intend to fix because
Adobe's PDF generating software didn't use those functions of PDF.
I think that in general Adobe is one of the "good guys" to the extent
that firms based on proprietary technology can be good guys. PDF,
like Postscript itself, is an open standard. All of Adobe's
documentation is available at prices that means a choice between two
beers and the book, not your car and 24-page mimeographed leaflet
(like the ISO) Their tech staff are allowed to admit that there are
bugs and that they won't get fixed because there's no budget for it.
But PDF is a reasonable interchange format only because the
alternative is MS Wart.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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