4 ms·

In my ideal world, PDF would be the next to die. My problem isn't with PDF itself, but that it's overused in places where it really doesn't need to be. Academi

In my ideal world, PDF would be the next to die. My problem isn't with PDF itself, but that it's overused in places where it really doesn't need to be. Academic papers are the big one, where HTML would almost always be a better choice. What's even more maddening is that papers aren't written using Adobe's PDF tools, they're written in TeX and then converted. If you're an academic reading this, I implore you to please publish your papers in HTML (alongside PDF is fine too!). It makes them far easier to read, as browsers can reformat the document according to the readers needs. PDF is a type-setting format for ensuring print-accurate documents. Please stop publishing content that is meant to be consumed online in it.

pmlnr 9y ago
PDF is an OK format - if you're targetting print. TeX is better though. Unfortunately many aren't aware that CSS can help a lot with printing HTML documents, making the formatting nearly as nice as with PDF, but it takes a lot of tests to make this sure, especially with images. I wonder is there are any simple CSS templates that are view AND print friendly, possible passed to Pandoc[1], so you write your HTML and it'll just work. [1]: http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/
- blkhawk 9y ago
  Do you have any idea what a fuckerclust the PDF format is internally? Here is a relevant Talk from 27c3: https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-omg_wtf_pdf https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-omg_wtf_pdf
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    That doesn't matter because it isn't bad enough to stop people writing good enough software for it.
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
  For CSS Paged Media there's Prince (fka PrinceXML and expensive) and wkhtmltopdf (F/OSS, Webkit-based), but while these are certainly good enough for printing of invoices from web content and casual documents (and even academic publishing), I doubt CSS Paged Media will ever match facilities of dedicated print tool chains such as FrameMaker etc. Prince is based on a transcription of CSS to constraint logic (using the Mercury Prolog-like system), so I wonder if there's a formal specification of CSS that could be lifted into a Prolog specification to yield a CSS renderer for print (the only work I'm aware of in that direction was [1]). [1]: https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/extended.pdf https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/extend...
pulse7 9y ago
Since PDF/A is used massively for long-term archiving/preservation it will not be dead for at least 50 years...
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  You are right, there are a lot of businesses that rely heavily on PDF and a fairly large software ecosystem supporting them. It isn't going away anytime soon.
swiley 9y ago
The way PDF is used currently prevents a lot of stupidity found in HTML documents. In theory, well written HTML would be easier to read, but even on my phone I prefer PDFs because I know the page won't move around while I'm reading it or try to do some aweful interactive thing. A better format would be markdown with latex for equations (and maybe the bibliography.) It's portable, readable, and not a typesetting format. Plus it means paper authors don't have to worry about all the page formatting. All of the blogs already use this anyway.
captn3m0 9y ago
I was thinking of doing some post-processing on arxiv PDFs, and as it turns out a lot of papers include the original TEX sources. Sadly, this isn't the case with the final published papers elsewhere.
pseud0r 9y ago
TeX isn't that widely used outside of fields like physics, math or computer science. Academics in others field like using Word.
- moxious 9y ago
  TeX is great for very complicated situations, which doesn't describe what most people do.
  - snorremd 9y ago
    (La)TeX is great when you don't want to manually handle formatting your text. I loved writing LaTeX for the simple reason that I could focus on the content, rather than having to constantly work on the presentation. The markup was simple enough that it did not get in the way. Barring technical problems I much prefer LaTeX to Word or LibreOffice Writer.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  Yes -- biology is 100% Word (some bioinformatics is done in LaTeX), and there is a whole industry of commercial products like EndNote which exist to handle citations and bibliographies in Word. Which is really weird. You'd think Microsoft would have added bibliographic management by now.
jhbadger 9y ago
So long as the standard form of journals remain printed, PDF really is the best format for academic papers -- because you want a reprint to exactly copy the journal pages including page numbers -- it's basically like photocopying papers from journals (which is what we used to do prior to the mid 1990s).
maxxxxx 9y ago
Totally agree. PDF is horrible for almost anything but print-accurate documents which probably only lawyers may need.

pmlnr 9y ago

PDF is an OK format - if you're targetting print. TeX is better though. Unfortunately many aren't aware that CSS can help a lot with printing HTML documents, making the formatting nearly as nice as with PDF, but it takes a lot of tests to make this sure, especially with images. I wonder is there are any simple CSS templates that are view AND print friendly, possible passed to Pandoc[1], so you write your HTML and it'll just work. [1]: http://pandoc.org/ http://pandoc.org/

blkhawk 9y ago
Do you have any idea what a fuckerclust the PDF format is internally? Here is a relevant Talk from 27c3: https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-omg_wtf_pdf https://media.ccc.de/v/27c3-4221-en-omg_wtf_pdf
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  That doesn't matter because it isn't bad enough to stop people writing good enough software for it.
tannhaeuser 9y ago
For CSS Paged Media there's Prince (fka PrinceXML and expensive) and wkhtmltopdf (F/OSS, Webkit-based), but while these are certainly good enough for printing of invoices from web content and casual documents (and even academic publishing), I doubt CSS Paged Media will ever match facilities of dedicated print tool chains such as FrameMaker etc. Prince is based on a transcription of CSS to constraint logic (using the Mercury Prolog-like system), so I wonder if there's a formal specification of CSS that could be lifted into a Prolog specification to yield a CSS renderer for print (the only work I'm aware of in that direction was [1]). [1]: https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/extended.pdf https://lmeyerov.github.io/projects/pbrowser/pubfiles/extend...

pulse7 9y ago

Since PDF/A is used massively for long-term archiving/preservation it will not be dead for at least 50 years...

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
You are right, there are a lot of businesses that rely heavily on PDF and a fairly large software ecosystem supporting them. It isn't going away anytime soon.

swiley 9y ago

The way PDF is used currently prevents a lot of stupidity found in HTML documents. In theory, well written HTML would be easier to read, but even on my phone I prefer PDFs because I know the page won't move around while I'm reading it or try to do some aweful interactive thing. A better format would be markdown with latex for equations (and maybe the bibliography.) It's portable, readable, and not a typesetting format. Plus it means paper authors don't have to worry about all the page formatting. All of the blogs already use this anyway.

captn3m0 9y ago

I was thinking of doing some post-processing on arxiv PDFs, and as it turns out a lot of papers include the original TEX sources. Sadly, this isn't the case with the final published papers elsewhere.

pseud0r 9y ago

TeX isn't that widely used outside of fields like physics, math or computer science. Academics in others field like using Word.

moxious 9y ago
TeX is great for very complicated situations, which doesn't describe what most people do.
- snorremd 9y ago
  (La)TeX is great when you don't want to manually handle formatting your text. I loved writing LaTeX for the simple reason that I could focus on the content, rather than having to constantly work on the presentation. The markup was simple enough that it did not get in the way. Barring technical problems I much prefer LaTeX to Word or LibreOffice Writer.
jhbadger 9y ago
Yes -- biology is 100% Word (some bioinformatics is done in LaTeX), and there is a whole industry of commercial products like EndNote which exist to handle citations and bibliographies in Word. Which is really weird. You'd think Microsoft would have added bibliographic management by now.

jhbadger 9y ago

So long as the standard form of journals remain printed, PDF really is the best format for academic papers -- because you want a reprint to exactly copy the journal pages including page numbers -- it's basically like photocopying papers from journals (which is what we used to do prior to the mid 1990s).

maxxxxx 9y ago

Totally agree. PDF is horrible for almost anything but print-accurate documents which probably only lawyers may need.