PDF Suitability Debate
The cluster centers on debates about PDF's appropriateness for digital reading and web consumption versus its strengths in printing and fixed layouts, with comparisons to HTML and calls for alternatives due to reflow, accessibility, and parsing issues.
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Why PDF is not suitable for you?
Because some people just want to read the PDF?
What disadvantages do you perceive for PDF?
PDF is for printing. Use text formats for everything else. Or, as a PDF alternative, DJVU.
PDF is a format designed for the exact display of documents, not for anything else. It's like ranting about your printer losing all those html tags semantic when printing a web page. The pdf format is not to blame here.
Is there any good replacement to this awful PDF format on the horizon?
Why is pdf bad in your opinion?
pdfs are categorically not the appropriate medium for this.
Not really. The main thing PDF gets you is pixel-perfect reproduction of paper, printable documents. Authors of those “document-oriented Web” proposals use the word “document” when they really mean “painfully lightweight text files”. At the same time, those text files (whether plain, Gemini/gemtext, or Markdown), can still be freely reflowed, they can adjust to your screen size and preferred font size — you can’t do that with PDF, which has a set and constant page width/height and whic
PDF- does not reflow, major suck- is binary format, another major suckSo no thx, PDF is outdated tech, while HTML and friends are just abused.