"Code Sandwiches"

[Nick Sabalausky]

"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.

Of course, show me a pdf viewer that's actually worth a damn for viewing 
documents on a PC instead of just printing, and maybe I could be persuaded 
to not mind so much. So far I've used (as far as I can think of, I know 
there's been others), Acrobat Reader (which I don't even allow on my 
computer anymore), the one built into OSX, and FoxIt.

>
> And yes, most of these papers are published in print format as their main 
> form
> of release. You're usually lucky to be able to get a PDF format instead of
> having to have bought the appropriate magazine or book of papers from a
> particular conference.
>

I'm all too well aware how much academics considers us unwashed masses lucky 
to ever be granted the privilege to so much as glance upon any of their 
pristine excellence.