On 2015-07-22, Laura Creighton <l...@openend.se> wrote:
>>The entire purpose of PDF is to prevent people from changing the
>>format and appearance of documents.
> My problem isn't that I don't understand this, my problem is that I
> think this is, in nearly all cases, morally the wrong thing to do.
>
> So this means that producing a reader that could do exactly what I do
> is well within the abilities of Adobe. But people who aren't as
> technologically sophisticated as I am, or who don't have access to
> such a person have to suffer. This is not a tehcnical limitation,
> but a political one.
OK, so the problem is that apparently people are using PDF when they
should be using something else (probably one of the e-book formats
that allow the reader to select font and format -- or maybe just
text).
Personally, I've never seen an PDF document/reader combination that
didn't allow magnification, but just magnifying then entire document
is a pretty lousy way to make the letters bigger.
> Should Adobe get hit with a ton of lawsuits from disabled people
> claiming unfair discrimination, they could change this policy
> overnight.
It's not Adobe's fault. PDF isn't _supposed_ to allow the reader to
change the format. It's the fault of people who are chosing to
generate PDF documents when they should be using something else.
Asking for PDF to allow the user to change the way the document looks
is like asking for gasoline that isn't flammable.
> Have the possibility of unchanging documents for the very rare times
> when that is wanted and indeed needed, and the rest of the time let
> the readers look at their docs any way they like.
That's _exactly_ what HTML was supposed to be. Now it's been broken
and turned into another PDF by "web designers" who think everybody has
the exact same monitor, OS, browser, eyes and brain that they have.
--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I'm a fuschia bowling
at ball somewhere in Brittany
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