[ot] Re: D hidden features topic for StackOverflow

[Nick Sabalausky]

"BCS" <ao at pathlink.com> wrote in message 
news:78ccfa2d329128caebdfa6344eba at news.digitalmars.com...
> Reply to Nick,
>
>> "BCS" <ao at pathlink.com> wrote in message
>> news:78ccfa2d3290a8caebd75c21451a at news.digitalmars.com...
>>
>>> Reply to Nick,
>>>
>>>> - Using PDF instead of HTML for anything except printing.
>>>>
>>> I'll grant you everything but the thing about PDFs. PDF's are good as
>>> stand alone long docs or anything where layout is important.
>>>
>> Ehh, I truely hate PDFs (except for highly accurate printing, of
>> course). Anything that can't be read on a screen without a bunch of
>> zooming and 2D-scrolling is just not suitable for being read on a
>> screen.
>
> I'd go the other way, PDF's are suitable for anything you'd like in 
> hardcopy but are to cheap to actually print off.
>
>> And that describes the vast majority of PDF's I've seen (For
>> example, a common occurrence is a single page with multiple columns of
>> text where the text is too small to be readable zoomed-out, but if you
>> zoom in, then every time you finish reading a column you have to
>> scroll *up* to the top of the page and then over to the right - which
>> is just a really stupid thing to have to do).
>
> OK so you can make a crappy layout, same goes for HTML.
>

But the PDF phenomenon I described isn't really a case of "bad layout". 
Those PDF files, like most PDF files, are designed specifically with 
printing in mind. For a printed page, what I described is often a perfectly 
good layout, maybe even great.

A person could, of course, have their usual "for print" PDF and, in addition 
to that, make another PDF that's laid out for screen viewing, but 1. It 
wouldn't be able to readjust the word wrapping as the window is resized 
(unless there's some obscure PDF extension to do that), and 2. If they're 
going to make two versions, they may as well just make the "for screen" 
version an HTML page.

>> Plus, vertical page
>> margins really have no business being in a screen-viewed document
>> either.
>>
>
> OK point to you
>
>> XHTML/CSS (despite it's flaws) is far better suited for screen-viewed
>> layouts since, unlike PDF, it doesn't force the reader to use
>> navigation that's, by comparison, incredibly awkward just for the sake
>> of preserving the locations of linebreaks within a paragraph, which
>> frankly is *rarely* important outside of printing (also true of any
>> other detail where PDF provides more accuracy).
>>
>
> PDF does zoom better than HTML. With web pages, you as often as not get 
> the tiny font wrapped to 1/2 the width of the screen or lines that are 
> about a paragraph wide. With PDF you can zoom in without things going 
> woonky.
>

I'd argue that's a browser issue. IE7 operates on the idea that zooming and 
layout should be completely independent, so it doesn't have that problem 
(Although I primarily use Firefox - I can't use the web without my favorite 
extensions :) ). Firefox (and probably other browsers) doesn't really have a 
true zoom. It just adjusts the text size (sometimes - it depends on the 
CSS), which is what screws up certain poorly-designed layouts. 
(Well-designed layouts also avoid that problem, even on Firefox.)

>> I might be mistaken, but I don't think editing a PDF can't really be
>> done with typical text editing / word processing software. You need to
>> either use the expensive Adobe Acrobat (full version), or some obscure
>> 3rd party program from an obscure developer. Not that editing a PDF is
>> needed nearly as commonly as reading one, but it is a problem that has
>> bitten me more than once.
>
> I've maybe once wanted to edit a PDF. (HTML for things people might want 
> to edit, docs and other book like things... Nope)
>

I think it's more of an issue when either 1. You're working on some 
organization's web team and a bunch of yahoos (from other departments) who 
can't proofread keep sending you things in PDF to put up on the site. 2. You 
need to fill out a form that only exists in PDF (and maybe hardcopy). But, 
to save time and dead trees, they allow you to email it back to them. 
Usually these people aren't aware that PDF is capable of having user-fill-in 
fields.

>>
>> Plus, the format itself is a bit of a kitchen-sink design. It's
>> impossible for a program to fully support PDF loading without also
>> supporting damn near every file format under the sun. And for
>> something that's primarily a page layout format, I really see no
>> reason for the added complexity that such flexibility entails.
>>
>
> Host Adobe and you don't need to bother.
>

Sometimes business reasons make it preferable not to rely on a third party 
for certain things because it can tie your hands and cause problems if the 
unforseen occurrs ("Hope for the best, plan for the worst"). If I were in 
charge of a program that needed to load PDFs, and that program and the 
PDF-loading feature were both mission-critical (for whatever reason) then I 
would make sure to have some fully in-house PDF-loading routines. Otherwise, 
the whims of Adobe could wind up endangering the whole company (The 
unthinkable does sometimes happen).

But rare scenario or not, contrived or not, my point is just that the format 
could have been designed better.