Reply received Tuesday, 28th January 1997:
Personally I've always found PDF a disincentive to view information -- the files tend to be large and 'clunky' to use, often just for the sake of a gigantic logo and an excessive number of typefaces. PostScript isn't exactly compact either.
Whatever the relative technical merits (or otherwise) of PDF are, however, the fact remains that, like PostScript, PDF is still a proprietary standard, and suffers from the same problems as other proprietary standards. Who knows whether Adobe will continue to provide free browsers once a sufficient user base has been established?
I have to say I'm somewhat mystified by the general willingness to accept proprietary standards when they originate from Adobe -- if Microsoft had marketed PDF, they would almost certainly have attracted widespread criticism.
Tony Gill ADAM project Manager tony@adam.ac.uk
Reply received: Wednesday, 12th February 1997
The answer to the problem of distributing information and maintaining the layout. Simple. The format is widely used. Authoring tools are widely available. Plug-in readers are freely available which can be integrated with your favourite Web browser. The solution? Microsoft Word For Windows?
You object? Microsoft, don't trust them. It's proprietary. True. So why support Acrobat PDF? OK, Adobe aren't Microsoft. But they could be taken over by them.
No, the answer has to be use of SGML. Greater control over the appearance is now available in HTML using Cascading Stylesheets. Tools are now available to create stylesheets (HoTMetal and HotDog to name two).
Let's not repeat the errors of the past and go for a short term solution which is clearly flawed.
Find out more about style sheets at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Style/
Use a browser which supports stylesheets to see an example of what stylesheets can provide.
Brian Kelly UK Web Focus Officer B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk
Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original authors. This page last updated on January 30th 1997