[LINK] RTF / MS WORD / PDF / ?

[Michael Still]

David Lochrin wrote:

>    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.".

Under certain circumstances, you can redistribute the Acrobat installer 
yourself -- we certainly do. I would suggest you look into that. The 
reason that PDF documents take ages to open is because the newest 
version of Acrobat reader is amazingly bloated. If you're willing to 
target an older version of the PDF standard, then you can get away with 
an older version of the reader.

Cheers,
Mikal