Nothing is standardized in the academia. There are too many traditions around the world, and people are not willing to abandon them just to satisfy some foreign

Nothing is standardized in the academia. There are too many traditions around the world, and people are not willing to abandon them just to satisfy some foreign bureaucrat's aesthetic sensibilities. In some places, if you want to do a PhD, you apply to a school. If admitted, you take classes, do rotations in different labs, and pick a supervisor. In other places, you first have to find someone willing to supervise you, and maybe also secure funding. Once you have a supervisor and funding, the application process is just a formality that can be done at any time. Reviewing candidates is the same in the academia and elsewhere. Maybe someone in your professional network already knows the candidate (the world is pretty small, after all), or maybe they already have experience and achievements to show. If there is nothing that makes them stand out, they probably wouldn't make it through the process anyway. Also, it's easier to fix the technical issues with PDF than to get the academia to standardize on anything. Maybe create a safe subset without all the unnecessary features you would not expect in a printed document, and call it PDF. And then rename the full PDF to something appropriate, like "This will devour your soul and steal your children".