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Convenience is exactly it. Have to admit I find it pretty damn useful myself, even though I believe PDFs to be completely out of scope of a web browser. I rea

Convenience is exactly it. Have to admit I find it pretty damn useful myself, even though I believe PDFs to be completely out of scope of a web browser. I really wish the format would disappear. Everybody says it's useful at being a "perfect digital representation of what things look like on paper", which is certainly super useful for printing. But I cannot understand how so much information that should simply be distributed in either HTML (forms), epub (ebooks) or jpg/png (scans and digital images) is distributed over PDF, a pain-in-the-arse, overengineered format whose readers are always extremely slow and riddled with security issues and from which it's extremely hard to extract source data.

Sanddancer 10y ago
There are a number of places where PDF has advantages that HTML, etc can't match. For forms, the PDF spec has electronic signatures, which means that you can sign legal documents without having to find a fax machine, or mail things back and forth. For print documents, it can do things like multiple column text in a sensible manner, across page breaks. As a general document format, it allows you to actually describe paper sizes, etc, so you can email someone a document that looks like it will when it's finalized. For archival, it means you can, without a bunch of hacks, create searchable documents of old, scanned in content. So things like electronics datasheets are searchable, and still retain the formatting of the originals. PDF continues to exist because there are so very many places that the alternatives are an even bigger pain in the ass, fix those, and then you can start to get rid of pdf.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  All sensible uses of PDF (except your first one; electronic signatures are ridiculous, but let's not get into that). I'm talking about where pdf is used and shouldn't be.
- gkya 10y ago
  Would postscript classify as an "even bigger pain in the ass" with regards to pdf?

Sanddancer 10y ago

There are a number of places where PDF has advantages that HTML, etc can't match. For forms, the PDF spec has electronic signatures, which means that you can sign legal documents without having to find a fax machine, or mail things back and forth. For print documents, it can do things like multiple column text in a sensible manner, across page breaks. As a general document format, it allows you to actually describe paper sizes, etc, so you can email someone a document that looks like it will when it's finalized. For archival, it means you can, without a bunch of hacks, create searchable documents of old, scanned in content. So things like electronics datasheets are searchable, and still retain the formatting of the originals. PDF continues to exist because there are so very many places that the alternatives are an even bigger pain in the ass, fix those, and then you can start to get rid of pdf.

scrollaway 10y ago
All sensible uses of PDF (except your first one; electronic signatures are ridiculous, but let's not get into that). I'm talking about where pdf is used and shouldn't be.
gkya 10y ago
Would postscript classify as an "even bigger pain in the ass" with regards to pdf?