those consultants seem to be having a competition as to who can get their clients to install the worst possible User Interface.

/me looks at this page, right now, is reminded of recent 2D FLATTY changes to its appearance as well as the uber-tiny edit font, and agrees.

Try printing a web page, a mess. Saving it a bigger mess. Everything has to be viewed on a computer screen, convert it to anything and you get long, long continuous piece of garbage without a page break.

Ditto.

The problem with re flowing text and images trying to accommodate different screen layouts brings to unreadable documents, as soon as they have some strong relationship among text, graphs, images, boxes, etc.

I gave up e-readers and tablets but for reading some "throwaway" books, mostly novels, something you read once and won't feel the need to return to it anytime soon - thereby not worth to be printed on paper and occupy shelf space. Everything else is far more accessible on paper - and PDF is what is closest to it.

Our customers do ask for PDF manuals because they can print them if needed. Give the a bunch of HTML pages you can't print in any sensible way and it would be almost useless. We do have on-help today is mostly HTML, but for extensive explanation of complex features that need references to images and graphs, PDF is still better.

Try to tell someone "look at page 57, what you're looking for is there" - with an HTML file.... and no, telling "it's at paragraph 4.35.22.2535.2222" is not that simple, hard to memorize, and less practical to find, even with a decent search function.

> ... "look at page 57, what you're looking for is there"

er, isn't that what linskare for?

Yes, yes ... you can read them on any device.

Whether that it something you'd want to do is another thing. Tried doing that on the phone? Not pleasant. Scroll, scroll, "crap", zoom out, zoom in, scroll scroll scroll. E-readers - with e-ink? Pretty much hopeless as the more complex the document, the harder it is to convert.

And lets not forget the Letter versus A4 wars that battle themselves wherever a "PC Load Letter" sign is blinking, and beeping. The document is NOT the same, even if automagic resizing takes place. Die PDF, Die.

Not having read the spec, i'd wager PDF has no concept of a paragraph. That would probably make the whole thing a lot easier for everyone. Or it's not implemented in any meaningful way.

PDF standard is so extensive that it has coverage for almost anything you could think of. Another totally different thing is that the people creating them with the proper authoring tools don't use everything. Authoring a PDF is not done by just printing from word to PDF.

Authoring a PDF is not done by just printing from word to PDF.

s/is not done/should not be done/

Y'know, I used to dislike PDFs. Slow, kluncky way to present information. And trying to extract text from them for notes, comments, reference can be painful. Or outright impossible. But a number of years ago, a lawyer pointed out to me that HE liked PDFs because documents in PDF form look more or less exactly like their paper and ink equivalent and in his profession having proper layout is important. It sometimes tells him whether material is substantive or explanatory or opinion. And he can go quickly to the section(s) of interest to him.

He's got a point. If users like/need PDFs. We should probably try to give them what they want instead of trying to force them to use some "better" alternative that they loathe.

Sounds like typical Mozilla arrogance culture there. They think they know better than their users, and it's for their own good too.

They've done this before with mandatory unblockable phoning home, etc.

In newer versions of Firefox you can't disable the update check and the notification too, for the user's (or the collective Internet's) own good. Typical leftist or collectivist attitude there, although I might be reading into it too much. But actually I've seen other examples of this attitude on their Bugzilla when users complain about some anti-customization related change, by the way. Mozilla can make a huge step back in one way or the other and they just tell people they "should embrace change".

Hmm. Firefox 88.0 here - new enough? I'm on an ancient version of Linux, and new versions of Firefox are offered by the Linux package tools. Firefox itself has never offered. There may be some config: thing I turned off years ago.

Yes. I can see using the internal PDF "support" in the next version being mandatory "for security" and any settings to use your preferred reader will be ignored.

That would be the Mozilla way.

"Sounds like typical Mozilla arrogance culture there. They think they know better than their users, and it's for their own good too.

. . . and they just tell people they "should embrace change"."

So, you're a big Microsoft Fan then?

Mozilla just added PDF features - the rest is just the opinion of the article's writer.

I use PDF to e-mail invoices. easily created. And I do NOT like in-browser PDF readers!!! I use atril on FreeBSD or Linux.(the 'system default')

Fortunately Firefox (last I checked) allows you to pick the system default PDF reader, or even force to "Save File" to avoid opening in the browser.

But I _NEVER_ use adobe, not since a version of it prompted me for MY E-MAIL ADDRESS... and hit the internet for a bunch of GARBAGE. It came pre-installed on that computer (a win 7 box). Uninstalled adobe, installed e-vince (which has a winders version), never looked back.

PDF is skeuomorphic, intended to carry the character of an old entity into a new one. It is designed to produce an exact replica of a printed document.

Well, seeing as it's based on PostScript, which was designed for printing documents, this makes sense.

My biggest problem, along with poor reflowing on e-readers, is the abuse of the format to obfuscate information. Politicians seem particularly guilty of this because it lets them follow the letter of the law about freedom information whilst making it hard for anyone to do anything with the information.

PDFs are great for making something that will look the same for everyone.

If you want something that adapts to the viewing device then do not use a PDF; this is something that HTML is good at.

If you want a form completed and submitted why use a PDF ? Some do that as a way of preserving their existing documents but just doing it over the web. If you want to do it over the web then HTML has got excellent forms ability, just please do not make it unusable with too much Javascript.

HTML will adapt to the viewing device (assuming that the HTML has been crafted correctly) but I'm not convinced about it providing something that will look the same for everyone. For example, it relies on the necessary fonts being installed on the client machine, or able to be downloaded dynamically...not something that can be guaranteed.

Also, an HTML 'document' is likely to have a number of sub-components, like image files, etc. required to render the final article. That makes it much less convenient as a thing that can just be shared in the way that a single PDF file can be.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, not Hypertext Layout Language. No it won't look the same on all devices. It's not supposed to. It just presents the same content in a hopefully acceptable, but device specific, way on all supported devices.

I suspect an HTLL were it attempted would produce quite awful results much of the time.

I have actually made it possible, within some limits, to display an HTML interface on multiple differently-sized screens (for embedded) such that no matter how large or small the screen is (physical and/or resolution), the interface remains the same relative size with a similar appearance.

Careful use of 'rem' and '%' in sizing (and being explicit about it), as well as setting the size of the default font for 'html' style section to be according to that screen size, makes it possible. Then you can put anything wherever you want it to go, and as long as the aspect ratio of the display is reasonably close, it will work and have a consistent appearance. (this is using Chrome in kiosk mode of course)

So within reason, it IS possible to set up your style sheets and web paghes to display them consistently (within reason), just not necessarily easy. But, if needs demand it, it CAN be done, and is practical to do.

And In My Bombastic Opinion the web page rendering for portrait mode on a phone should always say 'please rotate your device 90 degrees'

This is what I was going to say. I was recently submitting resumes. I obviously don't care if they can be read on a phone, but I definitely do care that everybody will see the formatting that I did when creating it. Thus, PDF.

On a website I run there is an online application form and a link to the paper (pdf) version that can be downloaded and printed out.

I also hold archives of the minutes of meetings and old editions of the club magazine again in pdf format so it can be reprinted exactly as the original publication.

PDF for these is perfect as some of the original publications are in a format that you can’t read anymore as the original application isn’t supported (and I haven’t anything it can run on…)

> ... something that will look the same for everyone

Unless their page size is different to the authors. Or they don't have the right fonts installed. Or lots of other things, probably.

You seem to have turned stuff on its head. It's a blessing when documentation is in a proper PDF instead of god-awful HTML documents (and worse, when there is no single-page version of that HTML)

Absolutely spot on. Books are tried and tested, we know what works well. While the Web is full of faddish, fashion-trend "designer" bullshit, which I think we can thank Apple for starting.

/me casts a quick glance at two 1000+ page manuals and fiercely agrees with the previous poster.

And just recently, while learning a new programming language, I've been searching through PDF/epub programming books and actually it's faster than Googling it, and the results are more relevant as well.

I'm in fact planning on torrenting an entire ebook library (such as Library Genesis or Z-Library) and once that's done, I will try and get a search engine installed on my local computer, then I'm really going to pull the plug on the Internet for considerable lengths of time... Bye bye surveillance nightmare....

Yes, that requires multiple ~20TB drives, and I am prepared to pay for it, because the level of Internet surveillance today is so intolerable, knowing that Tor is no longer secure anymore and VPNs are practically useless. Finally some amazing tech to look forward to, for me, it's just like the 90s again. And too, I have finally found freedom again! I can read anything I want without intelligence agencies knowing about it.

And I can't wait for the day when the whole library's going to fit on a Micro SD card and I can have it all in my pocket, no network connection required absolutely and thus no government or moral busybody snooping, period. Incredible.

But.... millions of people thoughts for years that the big "E" sign or the AOL sign was the internet. Apple were nowhere. 'E' as in Internet Exploder.

Apple Mac's were around 10% of Personal Computer sales. Only with the iPhone did their presence on the Internet really grow.

AFAIK, they are still only around 12% of sales in that sector.

It was the iPhone that started it, flashy animated pretty UIs over functional logically designed ones. They basically started the "User eXperience" movement that started to prioritise flashiness and aesthetics over function. And making the interface "delightful". F**k that.

Also apple came up with the idea of a mouse with one button... Dumbed down from the very beginning.

And I think the original Macintrash was the first computer that were not designed to be user serviceable in any way. Had tamper proof screws on the case, at least ones you could not open using a normal screwdriver. And the minimalist one-piece design with monitor and CPU in the same case.

Makes for good [1]target practice . Some very satisfying destruction there, how nice, I still remember that site from the early 00's.

[1] https://powlus.net/macintrashin/

It's a blessing when documentation is in a proper PDF instead of god-awful HTML documents (and worse, when there is no single-page version of that HTML)

Agreed. It also means that I can easily save my own local copy of said document so it is available when I need it, even if the company has gone under / been acquired / lost interest / purged product docs the nanosecond they became EOL.

> ... documentation is in a proper PDF ...

I think the problem is that no-one ever quite manages to get things into a "proper" PDF.

Having just submitted my tax return, I think the HMRC website gets this about right. All the data input and presentation is in web/html. You can jump back and forth, you aren't blocked from filling page 6 because you haven't done page 5 yet. When completed you can review everything in web/html, with an option to download a PDF version as an offline reference. Which I do, print off, and file away, because I'm like that.

Please, HMRC, your submission website works! Yes, there are niggly flaws, but please, don't let the consultants and politicians nag you into "making it better" and breaking it. It's fine as it is.

I agree - when self-assessment moved from paper to online I was kind of dreading it, but the HMRC website is pretty darned good. Similarly, Companies House for online submission of forms is another good example of a data entry website done right.

It's everywhere else that they have a problem...

e.g. Charging me double tax for six months, giving me a refund, then not charging me anything for ten months, taking 50% of my last two months, then charging normal paye, and last week telling me I underpaid last year so they're adjusting the tax code next year...

I don't dispute the amount, I just dispute the idiotic way they go about doing everything two years late.

Funny and ironic how when I was part through reading about how bad old PDF doesn't move with times and modern "responsive" web, the webpage jumped and moved to accommodate for an ad changing for one with different height, making me lose track. It only took two more ad reloads and me having to hunt for where I was until I gave up on finishing reading how unwieldy and inconvenient PDF is.

I thought they were trying to phase out PDFs at first, thank God that's not going to happen anytime soon. *Much* prefer PDFs and e-readers to the Web.

the webpage jumped and moved to accommodate for an ad changing for one with different height

It is possible to create a mess with even the best of tools. Do not blame HTML for some numpty mangling it with Javascript from some framework that s/he does not really understand.

Or use something like uBlock Origin to chop out all the shit on a web page that you're just not interested in.

It's certainly not the fault of the HTML/CSS/JavaScript technology itself. But it's the fault of the community surrounding such tools.

If you want PDF you are going to get people with background in the print/book industry to design your document.

If you want HTML you are going to get web "designers" and all their stupid, flashy, excessively padded, low contrast text fads coming with it.

So go for PDF and other formats that have roots in books, etc. and you are not going to get the bullshit. PDF supports hypertext too, you can link to other files, etc. So you still get some of the HTML functionality, without the crap. And it's *proper* native vector graphics, with *loads* of features, and it's had support for that for 20+ years, you can't say that about HTML.

And PDF, once downloaded, doesn't spy on your every single turn of the page, as any Web site does routinely.

As long as you know how to set them up properly for online accessibility, etc.

Are people Continuously Understanding New Technology Systems? Ops, I expect that AI will eradicate this.

"Please print out this form, fill it in, and send back a scan."

Even worse, "Please print out this 20-page contract, sign the last page, scan all 20 pages back in, and email it to us".

So I try to add a scanned signature to the original PDF. Not allowed.

Maybe I can just print the final page, scan it and replace it in the original document. Not possible.

Libre Office can edit PDFs, but the result never looks quite like the original document.

The only solution seems to be to print the thing to 20 single-page image files, edit the final one to add a signature, then assemble them all into a new PDF. But life's not long enough, so print'n'scan it is.

If you need to accurately edit a PDF, then inkscape is a great tool.

Yes, it currently only opens a single page at a time... maybe something to put into a feature request.

Still, this can be worked around.

As it happens, the latest version of Inkscape now supports multi-page documents in SVG, and so can import multiple pages of PDF :)

Oooooh!

I will have to look into that. Very useful!

Inkscape can also be very useful if you need a CAD model of a part, and the vendor only offers a 2d pdf (requirement: drawings in vector format)

Pipeline: pdf -> inkscape -> dxf -> CAD program -> 3d model.

A bit of work but muuch better than twiddling around with bitmaps as background to your parametric scetches.

A properly imported pdf can often let you mage very good guesses at the original parametric measurements of the part, even if curves have been chopped into multiple line segments and similar.

Have you have ever tried the "sign" feature of Acrobat? The reason is a signature could be added to a document, but can't allow the **original** document to be changed.