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Ask HN: Why are academic articles published as PDFs?
- PaulHoule 10y agoPDF is a workable format for documents intended for paper. With PDF you can produce documents with TeX or LaTeX or Microsoft Word or many other tools and get good fidelity printing on paper or viewing on a screen. For all the hype, web-based formats like MathML just don't equal what you can do other kinds of workflows.
- _RPM 10y agoPortable Document Format. That means it is portable. The web browser is the most portable platform currently. Most browsers can display PDF's. Most browsers can't display other formats such as Word, etc.