On Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 06:29:31PM -0800, Karsten M. Self wrote: > PDF of itself is open and standard. It's a reasonable document > presentation format (though I tend to prefer postscript). > > I'd strongly encourage you to use tools other than Adobe's proprietary > products, fortunately there are many which can be used to produce PDFs. Hello,
first about postscript: AFAIK it is the "intellectual property" of Adobe in the same way as pdf, and moreover it doesn't have hyperlinks and more importantly forms (checkboxes etc) which are essential to downloadable application forms etc. So ps is not an alternative in this respect. As regarding pdf, my point was that since it is adobe's standard, it can be changed without publishing the new versions description, or I can imagine even that they can simply declare that only they have the right to build applications using this format -- am I too paranoid? Thirdly, even if we accept pdf as an open format, it is hard to advocate pdf among people who don't like command-line utilities or TeX, because the only reasonable way to _create_ pdf-s right now seems to be either to use PdfLaTeX (TeX) or create ps (with a printer-driver on some systems :-) and convert it to pdf. Of course they can use Adobe's GUIproducts, Frame Maker or Acrobat Distiller (even this converter is shareware), but they have to pay for it. And because forms/hyperlinks AFAIK are only available with LaTeX or one of Adobe's products, it can not be said that creating pdfs is open to everyone. I personally like LaTeX, but don't think it is "The Way" for everybody. Best wishes: Andras
