I think the HN crowd has forgotten that the entire legal system uses PDFs, and in addition uses the redaction features of the likes of Adobe Acrobat, as well as

I think the HN crowd has forgotten that the entire legal system uses PDFs, and in addition uses the redaction features of the likes of Adobe Acrobat, as well as others trying to squeeze in like FoxIT. Redaction is huge in governments that have gone digital. Gone are the days where you print the paper, black it out, and then photocopy it. I have worked with PDFs for a long time, and if you ever wanted compatibility, you had to use Adobe Pro, since there were so many bad PDFs with weird embedded stuff that only Adobe could read properly...because it was initially created in Adobe sigh All other products try to catch up, but they can't clean up the mess that Adobe has left behind.