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Adobe PDFs

Started by Raloth Aug 12, 2003 at 10:22 AM 19 replies 600+ views

Original Post

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:22 AM

Does anyone hate these things as much as I do? I mean seriously, what is the point of them? -acrobat sometimes takes forever to load and more often than not completely crashes my computer -files are generally larger than html pages -pictures are just weird -font looks weird and is hard to read -scrolling often doesn''t work right, and most of the time I can''t use the mouse wheel -selecting text is a pain -did I mention they crash my computer? Why not just use an html page?! I have no idea how these stupid things took hold. The only good use I have found for them is distributing sheet music and saving my pagemaker file for another computer that didn''t have pagemaker installed.

Big B

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:26 AM

They are very predictable when printing. They also have a free viewer, which is more than I can say for stupid WordPerfect.

outRider

110

outRider

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:28 AM

If you know why the postscript format exists then you can figure out why PDFs have come along. PDFs are just better postscript files, they are not intended to replace HTML.

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- outRider -

Pouya

203

Pouya

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:36 AM

I thought the name was self-explanatory?
PDF = Portable Document Format

Raloth

Author

Raloth

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:39 AM

I was just thinking...they require acrobat. What if the machine doesn''t have it? Not so portable anymore... Since Windows comes with IE I think html files would be a little more portable.

Pouya

203

Pouya

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:41 AM

quote:
Original post by Raloth
I was just thinking...they require acrobat. What if the machine doesn''t have it? Not so portable anymore... Since Windows comes with IE I think html files would be a little more portable.

HTML is a markup language, not a document format.

When you type up your essay/resume/report/manual in Word, do yo usave it as a .doc or as a .html?

Hitchhiker90

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:41 AM

My only gripe with PDF files are that they are larger than other formats.

Raloth

Author

Raloth

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:43 AM

I'm not discussing this as which format technically fits your purpose, I'm talking about practicality. I would much rather load an html page that is half the size than spend 10 seconds for acrobat to load, then another 30 seconds for the pdf to load. By the time all that is done I could have read the entire html version and moved on.

[edited by - Raloth on August 12, 2003 11:45:35 AM]

walkingcarcass

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:49 AM

You can spead up Acrobat loading by not installing it. I have a really old laptop which I use this trick on a lot:

Install it on the laptop
Connect to my real computer by Laplink or whatever
Copy the install directory
Uninstall from the shitty old laptop

With some programs you have to tinker a little, but there''s often a load of unnessecary crap in the registry chocking things up. Ive installed almost all my programs like this and I still boot in 30 seconds. Acrobat loads in about 8 seconds and the document in two.

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Dreddnafious Maelstrom

272

Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:50 AM

quote:
Original post by Pouya
quote:
Original post by Raloth
I was just thinking...they require acrobat. What if the machine doesn''t have it? Not so portable anymore... Since Windows comes with IE I think html files would be a little more portable.

HTML is a markup language, not a document format.

When you type up your essay/resume/report/manual in Word, do yo usave it as a .doc or as a .html?

thats narrow thinking IMO, .html is a better standard than .pdf, and Adobe as a company is shitty.

Pouya

203

Pouya

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:54 AM

Then use GhostScript if you don''t like Adobe.

HTML and PDF are for different purposes. For one thing, PDF is more "official" than HTML. Like when I had to submit my research report, I had to do it in postscript or pdf. Any other formats and my supervisor would have hated me for ever (he''s like a walking version of Slashdot, can''t go for an hour without making a microsoft joke)

Pouya

203

Pouya

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:57 AM

Speaking of which, here is that report in pdf if anyone wants to see.

[edited by - pouya on August 12, 2003 11:58:12 AM]

outRider

110

outRider

Aug 12, 2003 at 10:59 AM

quote:

I'm not discussing this as which format technically fits your purpose, I'm talking about practicality. I would much rather load an html page that is half the size than spend 10 seconds for acrobat to load, then another 30 seconds for the pdf to load. By the time all that is done I could have read the entire html version and moved on.

The fact that a PDF fits a purpose is exactly about practicality. Is it practical to save something that you need printed exactly the same on all platforms as html? No.

HTML isn't even guaranteed to look the same on all platforms, let alone print the same. PDFs are so large because they contain all information needed to accurately represent that document, measurements, scales, fonts, and about a hundred different values that HTML was never meant to convey.

And as an aside, every PDF that I have ever seen has been smaller than its Word equivalent, and has looked more accurate than its Word equivalent. Again, look into why postscript exists in the first place.

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- outRider -

[edited by - outRider on August 12, 2003 12:00:24 PM]

Raloth

Author

Raloth

Aug 12, 2003 at 11:30 AM

Ok, so you got me there. They are good for printing

. I still stand by my points though, and I really think any article should also come with an html equivalent.

Pouya

203

Pouya

Aug 12, 2003 at 11:32 AM

http://www.pdf-to-html.com/

Dreddnafious Maelstrom

272

Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Aug 12, 2003 at 11:40 AM

im still not sold, .pdf is a proprietary format and adobe has a monopoly on it, i dont think anyone should be encouraging its use. but you have a good point about the print formating, of course if there was only 1 browser for html like there is only 1 browser for .pdf then those problems wouldnt exist ill bet.

Pouya

203

Pouya

Aug 12, 2003 at 11:43 AM

quote:
Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
.pdf is a proprietary format and adobe has a monopoly on it

Proprietary?
Monopoly? (2nd item in general features)

Ekim_Gram

Aug 12, 2003 at 11:54 AM

I like PDF''s. It''s much better to rean an e-book from PDF format then just sitting staring blankly at your computer trying to make out all the black and white in notepad.

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Dreddnafious Maelstrom

272

Dreddnafious Maelstrom

Aug 12, 2003 at 12:00 PM

adobe owns .pdf the format, no one owns .html.
im not sure if they make an SDK available frankly, but i had a enterprise sized database project and wanted to use their format and an embedded browser liscense was 35,000USD. I used the IE object in VB and .html format instead, then it dawned on me that .html was the most prolific format anyway... saved by their wallet raping prices.

Pouya

203

Pouya

Aug 12, 2003 at 12:25 PM

quote:
Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom
adobe owns .pdf the format, no one owns .html.
im not sure if they make an SDK available frankly, but i had a enterprise sized database project and wanted to use their format and an embedded browser liscense was 35,000USD. I used the IE object in VB and .html format instead, then it dawned on me that .html was the most prolific format anyway... saved by their wallet raping prices.

That''s almost as bad as buying SCO license for Linux.

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