2005-09-15
A Belorussian translation
of this article is provided by Uta Bayer.
What is the PDF format good for?
- XP printing format
- A document designed and finalized for the printer should be
encoded as a PDF. There is no better cross-platform printing
format: the pre-formatted layout and all its details, pagination,
and print settings will be properly preserved through transport
and onto the paper while still staying independent of machine
specifics.
- intensively designed static documents
- I.e. artwork. It doesn't have to be a picture, it
could be an essay. But a high quality document into which a
serious typographer has poured attention and skill cannot be
transmitted in a fluid format like HTML+CSS. When a document
has been masterfully laid out, changing anything—the font,
the paper size, the kerning, the ligatures, the positioning,
the line breaks, the page breaks, etc.—will collapse all
the labored fine-tuning. A typographer will pay attention to
details you wouldn't notice, to delicate problems that none but
the highest-quality publishing software (and often not even
that) can automatically correct. A graphic designer will adjust
layouts that you wouldn't know are wrong unless you've seen
what she truly has in mind... and even then you may not notice
the patterns that drive her design. In these kinds of
presentations, the details of the layout are as much a part of
the document as the text content itself, and PDF excels at
representing them together.
What is PDF not good for?
- online presentation of information
- PDFs are great when the layout of the document is important
to preserve, but they are clumsy, unwieldy things to deal with
on the computer screen. Where PDFs are awkward to read and
navigate, however, HTML+CSS is effective. Though it lacks the
detailed control to represent perfected static design, instead
the designer's skill goes into allowing the document to
gracefully adapt. Web documents are fast, compact, accessible,
convenient, and adaptable. Their fluid layouts conform to different
screens, pick up available fonts, and accomodate different
text sizes. Divorced from its presentation by marks of semantic
and structure, an HTML document can render its intent onto many
different canvases, from laptops to cell phones and voice-based
readers. Text can be read, searched, auto-translated, restyled,
cross-linked, and exerpted: because HTML is a format designed
to be used and manipulated, not just optically admired.
Why do so many people still use PDF inappropriately?
- CSS's fluid layout capabilities are not sufficiently advanced
- There is no killer editor for fluid layouts and styling
People are stuck in a static layout mindset. But as long as
there's nothing strong enough to pull them out of it, they'll
just stay stuck there.
mpt refers you also to Joe Clark's notes on how
PDF is overused
