TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Apr 15 06:16:01 EDT 2024

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Ben Blish

Ben Blish compares PDF with HTML:" ... You could just use HTML in the first place. PDF is primarily a scam, a huge, overweight format that offers very little in return for it's proprietary nature. If you can't prepare a good document in HTML, use a higher level tool to do it for you. Or learn how, which is smarter, anyway. HTML is the language of the web. PDF is not. HTML is a fabulous, compatible, live loading streaming format. PDF is not. HTML is a flexible, live medium that encourages quality document authoring in many styles (including print styles) while PDF is a static, inflexible medium that encourages "print-like" authoring only. HTML is accessable to any machine, old or new. Anything on the net. PDF is accessible only to machines that have ports of these representations, and that's just a few platforms. PDF locks you to Adobe (like GIF locks you to Unisys.) HTML frees you to use any compatible mechanism from a text browser to the most complex, newest, dingleberry-enhanced browser (like Opera!) When ego drives you to require a printed document (or a net document!) that "must match exactly" what you see on your screen, all you're doing is demonstrating that you're anal retentive. And that you could care less, or have not considered in any depth, the needs of the readers. Yes, readers have vastly different needs. Some *need* large print, some prefer small. Size is totally relative - what looked good to the author on a 15 inch monitor running 800x600 looks like ant tracks on a 21 inch in 1600x1200. Some like wide columns, some like (or need!) narrow. TO limit the reader to the composer's vision of a document is egotistical, shortsighted and in some cases, even cruel. We're beginning to even see this foolhardy approach on web pages with advent of style sheets; pages where the font can't be enlarged and the page does not follow the browser size... imagine the dismap of the visually impaired as they can't read what's on the screen because some joker locked the font into a tiny representation. If you're good at authoring documents, you'll write them so that they display well in any browser, and print in a rational fashion from those browsers, barring actual browser printing problems you can't get around (the same thing applies to PDF... no special dispensation required!) You'll test your documents at all font sizes to make sure that they continue to format well, and you'll make sure your images don't stomp on your text because you didn't clear the margins. But what you WON'T do... is use PDF. And... almost all of that applies to postscript as well."

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