On 22 Mar 98 at 10:58, Bob Wright wrote:

> Using Acrobat to generate Text files for Internet download allows
> the author of the text to create documents with illistrations &
> text formatting that is somewhat universal to all computer systems.
>
> The benefit to the author is he can publish documents that are
> brochure slick and available to everyone on the Internet.  The
> person wishing to read the PDF file can easily download the Acrobat
> reader to display the document.

  There's room for some debate about whether a given set of features
is desirable or not.  Graphic artists find that .PDF gives them more
control over presentation than traditional HTML (although HTML has
evolved in that direction); users may not regard this as entirely
friendly.  [.PDF defines cross-platform uniformity as X-Windows does:
a .PDF document looks like a .PDF document on any client system.]
  It's fundamentally impractical to extract text from a .PDF file for
other use; it's effectively read-only.  [I speak from personal
experience with internals of the format.]  Again, this is acceptable
and even desirable to some creators of documents, but limits document
usefulness.

  Using .PDF files may be the right way to proceed on certain
projects.  My current feeling, though, is that they are used more
often than their "features" are actually needed.

David G