[LINK] RTF / MS WORD / PDF / ?

[Howard Lowndes]

On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 11:43, Chirgwin, Richard wrote:
> David - "in the wrong hands" RTF can produce files as big, or bigger than, a
> PDF.  For eg, the old story of "very little data, very big logo" is famous
> in the IT press - one PR company was recently lambasted for sending a 65
> megabyte (stet) press release by e-mail...
> 
> Open Office has a very nice PDF writer if you're just dealing with
> text...for relatively plain stuff its PDFs are around 20-30Kbytes per A4
> page.

Richard, I think the point that David was making about PDF is the hoops
you have to jump thru to down load the reader from the Adobe site...too
hard basket.

> 
> Richard Chirgwin
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Lochrin [mailto:dlochrin at dot.net.au] 
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 11:11 AM
> > To: Link
> > Subject: [LINK] RTF / MS WORD / PDF / ?
> > 
> > 
> >    I've acquired the job of producing a monthly newsletter 
> > which is distributed partly by post and partly by email.  The 
> > email distribution has been in MS WORD format until now, but 
> > I'm considering changing to something which is more widely 
> > supported.  
> > 
> >    PDF is an obvious candidate, since a free reader is 
> > available for all platforms and it seems to have become the 
> > de-facto standard for interchange of documents on the web.  
> > But a friend working in distance education comments "pdf is 
> > often a problem.  Whatever Acrobat wants you to believe the 
> > truth is that, even if  you supply the url of the download 
> > site, when novices are presented with the questions asked on 
> > said site they often say 'too hard'.  And the pdf file can 
> > take ages to open.  I suggest rtf to academics provided the 
> > files don't have japanese or other characters and provided 
> > there are no mathematical expressions.".
> > 
> >    My general understanding was that RTF is not functional 
> > enough and could not, for example, reproduce complex tables.  
> > However the last issue of the newsletter seems identical in 
> > RTF & WORD.  The file size is 87 Kbytes instead of 73 Kb, but 
> > that's not an issue and it's still half the the size of the 
> > PDF proof copy I received from the printers (172 Kb).  I see 
> > RTF even handles embedded photos.
> > 
> >    RTF has the great advantage that it's a public-domain 
> > standard (RFC 1896), so RTF readers are available for just 
> > about every platform and can't be made illegal by 
> > Microsoft-inspired leglislation on intellectual property.  
> > Interestingly, the RFC includes an addendum which lists a 
> > simple 'C' program for converting RTF to HTML V2.
> > 
> >    I'd really appreciate any comments on suitable 
> > file-formats for general distribution of such material.  (And 
> > please excuse this long-winded post!)
> > 
> > ADL
> > 
> > ____________________________
> > David Lochrin
> > +61 2 9363 1094
> > For PGP public key,  send mail
> > to:  pgp-public-keys at keys.pgp.net
> > subject:  GET David Lochrin
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Link mailing list
> > Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
> > 
> 
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-- 
Howard.
LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people <http://www.lannetlinux.com>
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