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On Wednesday 10 October 2007 16:26, Benjamin A'Lee wrote: > On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 02:36:34PM +0100, Tom Potts wrote: > > Office Software - and PDF's - are a new form of one way encryption for > > your data. > > Why do you say this like it's the fault of the PDF format? That's > exactly what it was designed for - unambiguous, device-independent, > display-independent representation of a file in exactly the way it will > be printed or as close as possible. You're not supposed to be able to > change them once they've been created - you change the source file and > create a new version (using PDFTeX, Docbook, whatever). But they don't do any of that - I used to work for a label printing company and we thought we could use it for remote printing but then they came up with print to fit! Anyone seems to be able to change them and unless they are part of a secure document control system - when any format would do - they are hopelessly insecure. > > It's not the fault of the format that PDF files are used unnecessarily, > when another format would perhaps be more appropriate (HTML is probably > the most useful format for electronic documents, again created from TeX > or Docbook source). PDF is designed for fixed layouts that appear the > same no matter how big your screen is, and usually those layouts are > based around A4/Letter paper sizes, otherwise the document wouldn't be > printable; allowing the layouts to be resized/reshaped would mean you > can't guarantee that the document will look the same on all > screens/printers. But unless you control the printer or screen or display medium you CANNOT guarantee the appearance. It doesn't know the colour/type of paper I use in my printer. It allows you to scale the image on screen and on paper which radically changes the appearance of certain parts of the document. My printer/screen can radically change the appearance of a document by having a different resolution from your or a different set of gray/colour scales. It just doesn't do what it says on the tin. It cant do what it says on the tin. The only way a PDF document will actually look like the way you want it to look is if you print it out and proof read every copy of that document yourself. A small difference or feature or scale difference on my printer/screen can make a contract for £100,000 (part text - last character and part of the , a graphic or a slightly lighter grey scale) on screen become £100.00 when printed out and signed if you know certain features of a printer - or printing in draught mode. Or perhaps on slightly blue paper to blot out blue bits.... - theres more ways to print out/view a pdf so it doesn't look like it was intended to than you would believe. That may sound a little extreme but I've forged faxes before and they're legally binding. So would a printed PDF with a signature be! > > For on-screen documentation, where paper-shaped layouts are irrelevant, > other formats should be used (HTML?), created from the same source as > the PDF. If they're not, that's the fault of the document creator, not > the format. I have a serious beef about pointless paper shaped documentation on the computer but the Portable bit of PDF format is a pipe dream in itself. Tom te tom te tom > > Ben -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html