In a message of Wed, 22 Jul 2015 14:53:42 -0000, Grant Edwards writes: >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).
This is the standard way for people writing documents using libreoffice and microsoft word export them to a readership which cannot be expected to also have libreoffice and microsoft word. >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. Could not agree more. Laura >Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I'm a fuschia bowling > at ball somewhere in Brittany > gmail.com -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
