P3D Re: RE: Fred Peters' View CD project

[Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

John Ohrt wrote:
> Dan Shelley wrote:
> > > We decided to use Acrobat so PC's and MAC's have equal access.
> > 
> > Not necessary - Do it all in HTML and ALL platforms will have
> > access, and you will have smaller files.
> > 
> 
> The Acrobat reader is available for all but the most esoteric of
> platforms and PDF is vastly superior to HTML, especially in dealing with
> graphic and image content.  It is the de facto standard in the
> scientific and technical community as well as most intranets.
> 

When did they give up on TeX and LaTeX?

> The only downside to PDF is that you must buy the creation software from
> Adobe, AFAIK.
> 
> I much prefer pdf to html.
> 

Unfortunately there are problems with the Acrobat Reader (or the
programs that create the Acrobat files).  To see this grab B&H's used
medium and large format catalog from their web site (see
<http://www.bhphoto.com/>).  There are several sections on the first
page that are over laid with blank white rectangles as part of the
rendering of that page.  I'm sure B&H did not do this deliberately.  I
can hand edit bad html.  I won't bother with Acrobat.

Acrobat also tends to use fonts that are rediculously small.  I can
increase the reproduction ratio (normally I use 200%), but then I have
to pan around the page and be subjected to Acrobat Reader's incredibly
stupid repeated rendering of the page.  Haven't they ever heard of
"backing store"?  There is no reason for rendering a page more than
once (except for changing back and forth between pages).

I much prefer html to pdf.

-- 
Brian Reynolds                  | "Humans explore the Universe with five
reynolds@xxxxxxxxx              |   senses and call the adventure science."
http://www.panix.com/~reynolds/ | - Edwin P. Hubble


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