[LINK] Press Release from Senator Lundy

[David Nicholls]

Frank O'Connor wrote:
> 
> Mmm ... but Kate and her staff seem to improve, learn and listen ...
> unlike many others of the political persuasion. A few months back she
> was distributing press releases by PDF, and she has now changed to
> Word.
> 
> My objections to Word are pretty much the same as Grant's, with an
> added proviso ... I intensely distrust a document format that is
> tailor made to carry macro viruses. That said, it is more bandwidth
> efficient than PDF, BUT less bandwidth efficient than eMail, lists
> and/or NNTP news 

Umm... I know ths one has been done to death, but just out of impishness
I decided to convert a randomly chosen 17 page plain Word document
(saved *without* the ususal editing history crap), as a PDF, as HTML and
plain text:

The results:  

Word 97 document: 111k
PDF : 68K
HTML: 45K
Plain text: 42K

The doc has text, no tables and no graphics - just the usual formatting
of headings, bullet points, italics etc. (For the curious, it was the
PHP FAQ saved in Word format) The PDF was prepared using Acrobat
Distiller with mimimum add ins.

So, to confirm my suspicions at least in this one (possibly
representative) case, Word is the bloated format.  PDF for plain text is
not as bad as people claim.  That aside, I don't have much argument with
what's been said.  Proprietary formats should be used with caution if at
all.

And what about Kate Lundy's release?

Word doc: 25K
PDF: 10K
HTML: 6K
Text: 5k

What a pity the medium seems to have obscured the message.

DN
-- 
____________________________________

David Nicholls
Nicholls Communications
nicholls@world.net
http://www.dcnicholls.com/
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