[pdftex] FYI: Feature Requests for Adobe Reader

[James Quirk]

Victor,

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, Victor Ivrii wrote:

> Printed journal tries to maintain consistent volume with no regard to
> supply of good quality articles submitted. e-journal is much more
> flexible. Printed journals are articles binded together and tries to
> maintain a consistent appearance of articles in the journal no matter
> who authors are. As an author I prefer to maintain a consistent
> appearance of my articles no matter in what journal they are
> published. I suspect that traditional journals are too closely
> connected to printing press and paper to evolve. Like dinosaurs did
> not evolve into mammals. Note that today math. journals do not look
> different from those published 50 ya (even if technology changed).The
> publishers probably would resist to make electronic versions  so
> vastly superior that printed versions would be of interest to no one.
I agree with your assessment. But there is a glimmer of hope in
that some publishers are also interested in electronic text books,
and so there is the possibility of evolving by stealth i.e.
the next generation of researchers will grow up with certain
document capabilities in their education and then demand 
said capabilities for their professional work. Or as Max Planck
wrote in his Scientific Autobiography, 1949:

    An important scientific innovation rarely make its way by
    gradually winning over and converting its opponents:
    It rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen
    is that opponents gradually die out, and that the growing
    generation is familarised with the ideas from the beginning.

> I hope that editorial boards as representative of scientific community
> would have upper hand over publishers who would become  hired
> TeXnicians rather than dictators.
In the US, the Federal Research Public Access Act, should it ever
be passed, might provide the impetus for change.

> 
> 
> 
> >
> >  Now if you're not a fan of swf's, ponder the following.
> 
> Does not really matter for many users as long as pdftex can generate
> everything (subpoenaing pdf2swf or whatever) can produce the whole
> document
Again, I agree with you. If the right software is in place, then
the majority of technical authors won't care if they're generating 
PDF, SWF, OOXML, or whatever. All I was trying to do was to point
out that the next generation PDF will not be your father's!

James

> Vicor
> 
>
James