Data communicated as PDFs when it shouldn't be has frequently been a pain. Recently, I needed banking data that was _only_ available as bank statements in PDFs

Data communicated as PDFs when it shouldn't be has frequently been a pain. Recently, I needed banking data that was _only_ available as bank statements in PDFs or an unpredictable web ui. Consuming banking data as PDFs is a nightmare. The bank I was working with seemed to have spent _some_ money on its website (Regions Bank in the US, if anyone wants to know, but just so happens to provide .ofx exports for 19.95/month starting from the month you sign up, but not generated for previous months, although that's tangential). Meanwhile, my local bank that at first glance from its website seems like it's in the stone age provides a PDF statement that looks like it was made in the 80s (all monospaced font, no graphics), but they also provide a .csv export for transactions with seemingly no limits on date. The latter bank approach signals to me that data is in the format it should be in. No more, no less. The former suggests The PDF and a pretty web UI is the de facto standard for communicating tabular data when it shouldn't be. I get that PDFs online are a great alternative as a document that was originally meant to be printed and mailed, but it is a poor substitute for consumable banking data.