[plug] acrobat reader and printing

Christian christian at amnet.net.au
Wed Sep 6 11:46:55 WST 2000


On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 11:35:39AM +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> > Which proprietary applications?  In the past most lecture notes have
> > been distributed as Word documents -- I'd say PDF is certainly a step in
> > the right direction!  I'm pretty sure the specifications for PDF have
> > been openly published (although perhaps someone can correct me on this).
> > 
> It is my understanding, for example, that documents saved as web pages,
> or, in HTML format, by that office suite (Office 2000) and by their
> product Backpage 2000, or whatever it is named, can only be viewed
> properly by IE5 or later, due to MS proprietary stuff included. If it
> happens with saving files from the suite like that, then, it is logical
> to also assume that files saved as PDF files from that suite, could be
> similarly tainted. Especially when problems arise, in trying to open
> those files, with non-MS applications. MS appears to tend to have this
> attitude that output from its applications, should not be able to be
> accessed fully, apart from the latest versions of its own applications.

I'm sure the HTML would still display in Netscape etc., it just might
not include some special proprietary extensions.  If Microsoft included
proprietary extensions to PDF in their export filter then no one would
be able to read these files!  Bill has already said that the Acrobat
Reader under Windows can read the files therefore it would seem that the
PDFs generated are not proprietary extensions.

> Perhaps, the easiest solution, is just to save any documents produced by
> that suite, as .txt files. Then they are truly, universally accessible.
> But, an academic is not likely to be so accommodating.

And if an academic did this then you would find some new reason to
complain bitterly ("it looks so ugly...", "there are no pictures...",
"it's discriminating to people who use non-ASCII-based languages", "it
doesn't display on my EBCDIC-only terminal", etc.).  It seems to me that
PDF and (standard) HTML are the best formats for such distribution: HTML
if you want the document to be reformatted as appropriate and PDF if you
want the formatting and layouts to stay the same no matter what platform
it is displayed on.  In this case PDF seems like an good solution
(although the password protection is pointless) and nothing you've said
has convinced me otherwise.

< 37 lines snipped > 

Bret, why on earth did you include 37 lines of crap that you didn't
reply to and then append your name at the end?  If part of the email is
not relevant to your reply, remove it and in doing so take up less
memory, less disk space, less bandwidth PLUS make your email easier to
read.



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