[pdftex] Use It ?

[Kenneth L. Leonard]

Not to defend the author of the PDF-bashing article, but he does point out
that documents over 5 pages in length might be better produced in PDF. I
imagine most of us produce documents over that length. And he does suggest
that screen readability is hurt by the absence of easy to use document
navigation buttons in PDF. What he doesn't know (and maybe should) is that
there is quite a bit of good work going on within pdftex on producing
screen readable PDF files. I am using pdfscreen and find it a great
resource for publishing both screen readable and printable copies of my
papers on the web. 

His points about pointing search engines to HTML intro pages rather than
pages in the PDF document is a good one. And he mistrusts Adobe and
suggests using Acrobat 3 compatible documents even though 5 is now
available. I doubt many on this list would disagree with that!

In the trade-off between quality documents and absolutely idiot proof
documents he leans towards idiot proof. I myself lean towards quality. If
an idiot can read one of my papers, but with all equations destroyed and
tables misaligned, I'm not really helping myself very much!!!


________________________________________________
Kenneth L Leonard
Assistant Professor of Economics, Columbia University
1032 International Affairs Building   Mail Code 3308
New York, NY 10027
(212) 854-4092  Fax (212) 854 8059
www.columbia.edu/~kl206