[LINK] PDF isn't all bad (was Estens report posted)

[Carl Makin]

On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 11:56, James Pearce wrote:

> My complaints on PDF are the stupid size of the document, the inability to
> cut and paste, and the inability to search the entire document. That may be
> just a result of the system I'm using, but as far as I know it's universal.

By default acrobat starts in movement mode which doesn't let you select
text.  On the toolbar at the top there is an icon with a T and dotted
lines which lets you change to text mode where you can select and copy.

It also has a File->Find menu option letting you find within the
document.  Decent search engines like HTDIG do index inside PDFs if
configured correctly.

Also, a PDF should be smaller than the corresponding word document in
most situations unless lots of additional gumpf has been included such
as large high quality images (ie 300dpi+) or fonts.  Unfortunately a lot
of this is enabled by default, especially in the windows versions of the
acrobat distiller.

PDF has lots of problems, but word documents have many more.  


Carl.