8 ms·

> 4. Stuffed with fluff. PDFs tend to lack real substance, compared to regular web pages. The exact opposite is the case in my experience. Unfortunately the ac

by smoe 6y ago

> 4. Stuffed with fluff. PDFs tend to lack real substance, compared to regular web pages. The exact opposite is the case in my experience. Unfortunately the actual substance is often in a PDF and all the web pages pointing to it are superficial, copy and pasted and/or clickbaity fluff. They then go on about how in web sites the content can be better structured and navigated. Unless I'm misunderstanding the word in English, what has that to do with whether the content has substance? > [...] This leads to overwhelmingly long and inane PDFs You mean something akin to a book?

nattaylor 6y ago
Like the authors, I find that content published as a PDF is often extremely verbose, almost like the authors are paid by the page. Government reports, or those prepared by consultants, are often the worst offenders.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I had a capstone project in university where the clearest way to generate a better grade was to generate more pages. We put all sorts of rubbish in the report to make sure it made a "thunk" sound when we handed it in. It was nearly 300 pages when it should have been 90. The problem is, plenty will judge a report on its thickness. "It is thick, so it must be comprehensive." What percent of government reports are read cover to cover and what percentage are just ctrl+f through?
  - fwip 6y ago
    If reports are often ctrl-F'd through for relevant information, it seems likely that many people consuming it are reading far fewer than 90 pages in total - and wouldn't have read the full shorter report. Perhaps it is better to be comprehensive in government reports than concise, to accommodate a variety of readers who want to drill into different aspects of the report. (Of course, a PDF may not be the best structure for this! A well-formatted HTML reference with appropriate hyperlinks may be much more useful.)
    - formerly_proven 6y ago
      Yeah, but who is actually going to read a 7000 page report on torture or surveillance? (Assuming these reports were actually published, which they were not)
    - asdff 6y ago
      Or a PDF document with a table of contents. Look at this clickable beauty containing a wealth of information in tidy categories: http://media.metro.net/about_us/vision-2028/report_metro_vision_2028_plan_2018.pdf http://media.metro.net/about_us/vision-2028/report_metro_vis...
  - II2II 6y ago
    I ran into a similar situation, but decided to submit a short report anyhow. It earned one of my best grades in university. When I asked about the grade, since I ignored multiple guidelines, the response was that I said a lot more than most people even though I wrote less. It probably had something to do with my admiration of concise writing. It is something that I wish that I could accomplish more often.
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Good for your professor. I always refused to impose length requirements, but I would say what a typical length for the assignment would be (always in number of words, never “pages”). If you did the job in significantly fewer words, that earned you extra points. If you went long, but every word counted, you also got extra points. But any padding, wasting my time with unnecessary words, meant a penalty.
- bachmeier 6y ago
  Honestly, that's just silly. If they'd use html instead of pdf, you'd still have the same content. pdf is a format. It has nothing to do with the content.
  - a-priori 6y ago
    The constraints and expectations of the medium strongly influence the content. If I had an idea and wanted to communicate it, then I did so by recorded video, by live video, by blog post, by Twitter thread, and by HN comment, the same idea would be presented in very different ways. In the same way, a writer who publishes something by HTML (blog post, etc.) will produce a very different document than if they intend to publish it by PDF (ebook, etc.). They tailor their message to the constraint and expectations of the medium.
  - znpy 6y ago
    If we used html instead of pdf the whole society would collapse. Didn't anyone notice that it's basically impossible to save an html page today and have it load and render correctly and offline tomorrow?
    - kevincox 6y ago
      Perfect fidelity isn't there but all popular browsers have a "save page" functionality which seems to work really well.
      - spear 6y ago
        I've found the best way to save a page on a browser is to print it ... to PDF.
        stOneskull 6y ago
        it's quite nice this way. much better than the old .mht file even. it skips the junk.
        _Microft 6y ago
- smoe 6y ago
  Content is often written to a predefined length, no matter how it is going to be published. E.g. some news papers even if there is no print version anymore still decide how long a story is going to be upfront. And food bloggers, will fluff up an basic oatmeal recipe with 3 pages worth of childhood stories before getting to the point. Even if verbose, those PDF are often still the only place where the relevant substance is together. The websites referring to them then cherry pick from it. I spend a whole lot of time sifting trough goverment PDFs over the last couple months because it was the only way to get to the information I needed. It would be much easier if the content were available in different formats.
- hrktb 6y ago
  I think that's less on the format and more on the intent. For reports and what is traditionally viewed as "written form", reader is expected to have high tolerance for length and boilerplate. I see it as the pendant of the "younger generations can't read anymore" critic, where lenghty, rambling and diluted prose is becoming harder and harder to parse and focus on. On the other side page load speed and attention grabbing metrics are thoroughly studied for web pages and people value terseness, to the point of loathing click baits and endless listicles.
- leephillips 6y ago
  Have you ever visited https://arxiv.org/ https://arxiv.org/?
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
They also wrote: > and boring to read. Not only is that subjective, but how is that relevant?
- ImaCake 6y ago
  Neilsen group has clearly chosen their opinion and then found evidence that supports it. It is a shame too. If they discarded their bias, maybe they could take some of the real problem points about PDFs and make a solid persuasive argument why we should try to fix those problems.
ljm 6y ago
I've seen web based documentation that is infinitely worse than the 200 page PDF your bank in the EU will give you to implement SEPA integration. That stuff is thorough as hell and you even get schema definitions for all of it. I'd pick that over poorly explained or 'discoverable' alternatives.
red_admiral 6y ago
Couldn't agree more! I've yet to see a PDF that has animated ads, pops up a subscribe-to-our-newsletter modal halfway through, or even autoplays video a few seconds after you've started reading it. I mean I suppose you could do all that with embedded JS, in theory, but one of the nice things about PDF is it mostly works absolutely fine with scripts turned off.
notriddle 6y ago
> The exact opposite is the case in my experience. Unfortunately the actual substance is often in a PDF and all the web pages pointing to it are superficial, copy and pasted and/or clickbaity fluff. That's entirely cultural crap, and has little to do with either format. Or do you think that this HN comments page would be better distributed in PDF form?
- smoe 6y ago
  I'm not saying one format is better than the other, or it having to do anything with the format. The word "Unfortunately" is there on purpose. I often have to sift trough PDFs were it doesn't make sense to have the information only there. What I'm disagreeing with is that PDFs unlike web pages lack substance. In my opinion the substance is often in the PDFs not because of the format, but how the information is produced. E.g. within a government or enterprise the content could come from anywhere within the org structure, often multiple intermediaries away from the people putting stuff on the website. Everyone knows basic MS Word. On-boarding potentially hundreds or thousands of employees to a CMS and send them to a "how to craft effective digital content" which is what the Nielson article is ultimately selling is not always feasible. Only select pieces get a web treatment the rest gets summarized if not just linked. News papers have pipelines from Word to digital publishing tools to print / online because of this. But also this setup is not easy. I just recently needed some specific information about traveling to and quarantine in Switzerland. The news sites where useless, the linked government web page was useless. Only the original PDF at the end of the link chain contained the information. I'd prefer having this information more easily accessible/searchable. But as it stands, the substance is often in the PDFs, not the web pages.
agumonkey 6y ago
yeah I want to see what internet the author is browsing because for the last 5 years all I could see if vacuum on the web. headers footer side-ads privacy-popups massive-intro-photo and somewhere lost in all of this, a paragraph. Quite often the content could fit in a tweet.

by smoe 6y ago

nattaylor 6y ago

Like the authors, I find that content published as a PDF is often extremely verbose, almost like the authors are paid by the page. Government reports, or those prepared by consultants, are often the worst offenders.

MattGaiser 6y ago
I had a capstone project in university where the clearest way to generate a better grade was to generate more pages. We put all sorts of rubbish in the report to make sure it made a "thunk" sound when we handed it in. It was nearly 300 pages when it should have been 90. The problem is, plenty will judge a report on its thickness. "It is thick, so it must be comprehensive." What percent of government reports are read cover to cover and what percentage are just ctrl+f through?
- fwip 6y ago
  If reports are often ctrl-F'd through for relevant information, it seems likely that many people consuming it are reading far fewer than 90 pages in total - and wouldn't have read the full shorter report. Perhaps it is better to be comprehensive in government reports than concise, to accommodate a variety of readers who want to drill into different aspects of the report. (Of course, a PDF may not be the best structure for this! A well-formatted HTML reference with appropriate hyperlinks may be much more useful.)
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    Yeah, but who is actually going to read a 7000 page report on torture or surveillance? (Assuming these reports were actually published, which they were not)
  - asdff 6y ago
    Or a PDF document with a table of contents. Look at this clickable beauty containing a wealth of information in tidy categories: http://media.metro.net/about_us/vision-2028/report_metro_vision_2028_plan_2018.pdf http://media.metro.net/about_us/vision-2028/report_metro_vis...
- II2II 6y ago
  I ran into a similar situation, but decided to submit a short report anyhow. It earned one of my best grades in university. When I asked about the grade, since I ignored multiple guidelines, the response was that I said a lot more than most people even though I wrote less. It probably had something to do with my admiration of concise writing. It is something that I wish that I could accomplish more often.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Good for your professor. I always refused to impose length requirements, but I would say what a typical length for the assignment would be (always in number of words, never “pages”). If you did the job in significantly fewer words, that earned you extra points. If you went long, but every word counted, you also got extra points. But any padding, wasting my time with unnecessary words, meant a penalty.
bachmeier 6y ago
Honestly, that's just silly. If they'd use html instead of pdf, you'd still have the same content. pdf is a format. It has nothing to do with the content.
- a-priori 6y ago
  The constraints and expectations of the medium strongly influence the content. If I had an idea and wanted to communicate it, then I did so by recorded video, by live video, by blog post, by Twitter thread, and by HN comment, the same idea would be presented in very different ways. In the same way, a writer who publishes something by HTML (blog post, etc.) will produce a very different document than if they intend to publish it by PDF (ebook, etc.). They tailor their message to the constraint and expectations of the medium.
- znpy 6y ago
  If we used html instead of pdf the whole society would collapse. Didn't anyone notice that it's basically impossible to save an html page today and have it load and render correctly and offline tomorrow?
  - kevincox 6y ago
    Perfect fidelity isn't there but all popular browsers have a "save page" functionality which seems to work really well.
    - spear 6y ago
      I've found the best way to save a page on a browser is to print it ... to PDF.
      - stOneskull 6y ago
        it's quite nice this way. much better than the old .mht file even. it skips the junk.
      - _Microft 6y ago
smoe 6y ago
Content is often written to a predefined length, no matter how it is going to be published. E.g. some news papers even if there is no print version anymore still decide how long a story is going to be upfront. And food bloggers, will fluff up an basic oatmeal recipe with 3 pages worth of childhood stories before getting to the point. Even if verbose, those PDF are often still the only place where the relevant substance is together. The websites referring to them then cherry pick from it. I spend a whole lot of time sifting trough goverment PDFs over the last couple months because it was the only way to get to the information I needed. It would be much easier if the content were available in different formats.
hrktb 6y ago
I think that's less on the format and more on the intent. For reports and what is traditionally viewed as "written form", reader is expected to have high tolerance for length and boilerplate. I see it as the pendant of the "younger generations can't read anymore" critic, where lenghty, rambling and diluted prose is becoming harder and harder to parse and focus on. On the other side page load speed and attention grabbing metrics are thoroughly studied for web pages and people value terseness, to the point of loathing click baits and endless listicles.
leephillips 6y ago
Have you ever visited https://arxiv.org/ https://arxiv.org/?

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

They also wrote: > and boring to read. Not only is that subjective, but how is that relevant?

ImaCake 6y ago
Neilsen group has clearly chosen their opinion and then found evidence that supports it. It is a shame too. If they discarded their bias, maybe they could take some of the real problem points about PDFs and make a solid persuasive argument why we should try to fix those problems.

ljm 6y ago

I've seen web based documentation that is infinitely worse than the 200 page PDF your bank in the EU will give you to implement SEPA integration. That stuff is thorough as hell and you even get schema definitions for all of it. I'd pick that over poorly explained or 'discoverable' alternatives.

red_admiral 6y ago

Couldn't agree more! I've yet to see a PDF that has animated ads, pops up a subscribe-to-our-newsletter modal halfway through, or even autoplays video a few seconds after you've started reading it. I mean I suppose you could do all that with embedded JS, in theory, but one of the nice things about PDF is it mostly works absolutely fine with scripts turned off.

notriddle 6y ago

> The exact opposite is the case in my experience. Unfortunately the actual substance is often in a PDF and all the web pages pointing to it are superficial, copy and pasted and/or clickbaity fluff. That's entirely cultural crap, and has little to do with either format. Or do you think that this HN comments page would be better distributed in PDF form?

smoe 6y ago
I'm not saying one format is better than the other, or it having to do anything with the format. The word "Unfortunately" is there on purpose. I often have to sift trough PDFs were it doesn't make sense to have the information only there. What I'm disagreeing with is that PDFs unlike web pages lack substance. In my opinion the substance is often in the PDFs not because of the format, but how the information is produced. E.g. within a government or enterprise the content could come from anywhere within the org structure, often multiple intermediaries away from the people putting stuff on the website. Everyone knows basic MS Word. On-boarding potentially hundreds or thousands of employees to a CMS and send them to a "how to craft effective digital content" which is what the Nielson article is ultimately selling is not always feasible. Only select pieces get a web treatment the rest gets summarized if not just linked. News papers have pipelines from Word to digital publishing tools to print / online because of this. But also this setup is not easy. I just recently needed some specific information about traveling to and quarantine in Switzerland. The news sites where useless, the linked government web page was useless. Only the original PDF at the end of the link chain contained the information. I'd prefer having this information more easily accessible/searchable. But as it stands, the substance is often in the PDFs, not the web pages.

agumonkey 6y ago

yeah I want to see what internet the author is browsing because for the last 5 years all I could see if vacuum on the web. headers footer side-ads privacy-popups massive-intro-photo and somewhere lost in all of this, a paragraph. Quite often the content could fit in a tweet.