A thread in GQ made me think of posting this topic in “the Pit”.
pdf files really suck rhino !!!
So why are they all over the place?
And why the Hell would anyone use these on a website?
These things are difficult to manipulate and read.
That stupid “hand thing” doesn’t help matters either.
I suppose I could ask what made these files so prevalent or why they are the “standard” of document compatibility - but I won’t.
Anyone else hate Adobe Acrobat .pdf ? To use the popular phrase of the day “bring it on”.
I hate trying to read them, but I don’t know of another portable document format that will take a lengthy typed document with handwritten corrections, scan it, and produce a legible file that’s not impossibly huge. JPEG is unusable for scanning and sending such documents. As a proofreader who delivers her corrections via email, I find having a PDF-enabled scanner is a necessity.
I hate the hand thingie, too. I also hate the way a PDF jerks and bucks when you try to scroll down. But until a better format comes along, it meets the needs of my clients.
None of those are valid criticisms. The print size is whatever the designer makes it. You can create PDFs at 72 dpi or 600 dpi. It’s up to the designer to know how the intended audience will use it and adust dpi to balance file size and printing quality.
They can be edited somewhat if you have the full version of Acrobat, not just Reader, or Adobe Illustrator. However, the uneditability is a feature. Designers want files that can’t be edited and can be transferred across platforms without reflow or missing font errors. A properly created PDF looks the same whether you’re looking at it on an Win 98, XP, Mac OS 9, OS X or a Red Hat Linux box. That’s a very good thing.
Likewise creating them is simple if you have the proper software. From InDesign, I simply “export to PDF”. Since I have the full version of Acrobat, I can also print to my PDF Writer from any software and get a PDF that keeps the formating and text attributes of the original I can then send to anyone with reader.
Acrobat is one of the most useful programs on the market.
One reason: Adobe made Acrobat Reader free to everyone. I agree with Homebrew that Acrobat is an incredibly useful program, and PDF files are an extremely useful way to distribute documents. Would you rather have dozens of programs that you have to keep installed for all the various formats people would use?
PDFs are a wonderful format, when used correctly. I can send anyone a document, produced in an esoteric combination of programs, and be sure they will receive the same thing. To print-quality resolution. The only other way to do this would be with high-quality resolution images, where I’d be talking about many gigabytes, rather than a few megs.
On the other hand, they’re sloppily used on the net. Particularly on the websites of large organisations, where the inept ICT dept have clearly just said “Oh, give us a PDF and we’ll link to it” rather than putting together proper page(s).
I totally agree with Homebrew. I never e-mail Word documents anymore. Some people have Word97, others have later versions but not all features needed installed. A few persist in using WP.
Adobe was very smart, letting the reader that most people use be free, but charging for the software that produce them. Whenever I write something, I save the Word Document, but if I’m sending it over the web, I hit print and pick Acrobat PDF writer instead of the printer and it churns out a nice pdf.
If I need something printed that my crappy Epson inkjet can’t handle, but isn’t going up on a billboard, I can send off a pdf to the printshop and it’ll look ok to good, if not great. But it’ll be a lot easier to handle than a huge .pds .eps or .ai file.
Don’t blame the software for crappy documents. That’d be like blaming Dreamweaver for this.
Acrobat files were fine when they stuck to being just universal text documents. Now they’re trying to make them multi-media, hyperlinked, all singing, all dancing, all banjo playing super-documents. Which mean that the latest version of Acrobat Reader take eons to start up, as it loads every plug-in known to man. This is really annoying if you are browsing and click on a PDF link without realising it.
Ugh! Especially when it was written in Netscape Read the HTML.
I hate that I am always getting a message about updates. Good grief! Is it necessary to update every single time? When I do the updates, it seems like they take too long and I am always in a hurry.
Yes I hate them! I am glad to know others hate them too.
I like the .pdf files. I’ve been working with a singer/songwriter and have been transcribing his albums to put up on the website. Turning the simple transcriptions into a .pdf file ensures that whoever uses the file will know where the chords exactly belong and we won’t have to worry about resizing, fonts etc.
To do a little self-promotion, here’s a link to the first one: John Wesley Harding’s Why We Fight songbook.
I like PDFs. At work, I send files to the printers as PDF. And distributing PDFs is perfect for reviewing documents that are designed to be printed on paper.
I DISlike how people use PDFs on the web.
PDFs are kinda the opposite of the HTML/web-browser combo: while HTML was intended to flow in a browser and adapt to the user’s circumstances, the PDF format was intended to preserve page-formatting information: text spacing, fonts, image locations, pagination, etc.
To force the web user to adopt your page-layout choices rather than your document adapting to the user’s choices is very impolite.
I’m doing an increasing amount of online help, and one thing is becoming clear: even the structure of a document intended to be read online is different than one intended to be printed.
You even divide the content up differently: at the lowest level, online content is divided according to subject, while printed content is divided according to the format of the page it is printed on. Page numbers make no sense on the web; section and subsection numbering is difficult to use on the web… but printed materials cannot include vids and sounds.
Where it gets interesting is when you want to write your content once and publish it both in printed and online formats…
As a Unix person, I think PDF is a godsend. Before PDF, you had your choice of Postscript, which no one but Unix people can read, or Word, which Unix can sort of make and read with OpenOffice but not without it looking like shit.
You can set it so it doesn’t do that–so it scrolls smoothly. Sorry I can’t remember how, but I bet it’s in the file > preferences / options / something like that window. Open a PDF in acrobat reader itself, not within a browser window, so you can get at that option.
At the radio station, we use .pdf files to store forms and letterhead. Instead of having to keep a stock of forms handy, we can print them off as we need them, which saves us money in copying and printing charges.
I use PDFs to send invoices and project scopes to my customers. I can be 99% sure that these documents will NOT be altered, and 100% sure that they CAN be read (I have a standard sig for all of my billing emails that gives a link to download the reader). And by emailing these docs instead of snail mail or faxing them, I have a record of when they were sent.
As a Web designer I’ve had to use PDFs for client sites, and I think they’ve been done tastefully. One is manuals and info sheets for a auto parts manufacturer, and the other is technical info for products from a polymer company. These are things that need to be dirstibuted to all sorts of different types of computers and PDF is a great standard to have available.
HOWEVER, I do feel the OPs grudge with improper use of these files. And the bloatiness of the latest Acrobat. Grrrr.
On the internet, I hate them with a passion. They seem to crash or otherwise upset my browser 9 times out of 10. It also takes too long to load PDF pages off the net, and it pisses me off that it detours to check for updates instead of just opening the freakin’ page already. Quicktime and Adobe Acrobat Reader are two of my pet peeves.
PDF files are an accessibility nightmare. They’re also used entirely not as intended - this is not a format that works for the way most computer-savvy users process data. If I printed everything out, PDF would be a godsend. As it is, it’s incredibly inconvenient to force a computer to use print conventions. (Yes, I’m talking to you, Walt Crawford, you stubborn man.)
Sure, PDF has its uses, but generally speaking when I encounter it it’s badly used. I especially loathe that many digital preservation initiatives seem to think that PDF is a good idea - sure, you keep the formatting and such, but who thinks it’s a good idea to try to preserve things in perpetuity using a proprietary format? Not I. Just because it’s free dosen’t mean it isn’t proprietary. There has got to be a better way to get the advantages of the format without some of its disadvantages.
Read the HTML.