No, it has not lost relevance, and it will never be replaced by HTML. The PDF does one thing well: provide a fixed-format document that will (if the specificati

No, it has not lost relevance, and it will never be replaced by HTML. The PDF does one thing well: provide a fixed-format document that will (if the specification is followed) render a document with near-pixel perfect precision for decades into the future. HTML cannot do that. The format has shifted already, and will shift again. Documents will break. The format is not meant to be edited anyway. It's meant to be generated, perhaps marked up or filled in, but rarely edited. Almost everybody generates PDF from another source format. Complaining that PDF cannot be edited is like complaining that the output of a C compiler cannot be edited. It can, but you have to make the change in the source format, then regenerate. Adobe's dominance of the graphics stage is annoying to me, but the PDF format is the one good thing they have brought. The format is open, documented, cross-platform, standardised, and even has an archival subset (PDF/A) that can protect data for as long as we need to. It can be generated from any source, any program, and any scan, and unlike real paper, will never degrade with proper handling. In other words, vive la PDF.