"Code Sandwiches"

Jonathan M Davis jmdavisProg at gmx.com
Wed Mar 9 22:40:08 PST 2011


On Wednesday 09 March 2011 22:18:53 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.2409.1299728378.4748.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> 
> > On Wednesday 09 March 2011 13:30:27 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> >> But why is it that academic authors have a chronic inability to release
> >> any
> >> form of text without first cramming it into a goddamn PDF of all things?
> >> This is one example of why I despise Adobe's predominance: PDF is
> >> fucking useless for anything but printing, and no one seems to know it.
> >> Isn't it about time the ivory tower learned about Mosaic? The web is
> >> more than a PDF-distribution tool...Really! It is! Welcome to the
> >> mid-90's. Sheesh.
> > 
> > And what format would you _want_ it in? PDF is _way_ better than having a
> > file
> > for any particular word processor. What else would you pick? HTML? Yuck.
> > How
> > would _that_ be any better than a PDF? These are _papers_ after all, not
> > some
> > web article. They're either written up in a word processor or with latex.
> > Distributing them as PDFs makes perfect sense.
> 
> They're text. With minor formatting. That alone makes html better. Html is
> lousy for a lot of things, but formatted text is the one thing it's always
> been perfectly good at. And frankly I think I'd *rather* go with pretty
> much any word processing format if the only other option was pdf.

I'm afraid that I don't understand at all. The only time that I would consider 
html better than a pdf is if the pdf isn't searchable (and most papers _are_ 
searchable). And I _definitely_ don't like dealing with whatever word processor 
format someone happens to be using. PDF is nice and universal. I don't have to 
worry about whether I have the appropriate fonts or if I even have a program 
which can read their word processor format of choice. I don't really have any 
gripes with PDF at all.

- Jonathan M Davis


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