[LINK] Government gives thumbs down to PDF format

[Ivan Trundle]

On 06/12/2010, at 11:40 AM, Pilcher, Fred wrote:

> Ivan wrote:
> 
>> There are difficulties in knowing end-user expectations in the
>> electronic world. At least with print, expectations are generally
>> uniform.
> 
> Are user expectations really different in the electronic world?

At times, absolutely (see my last post). In the future? Absolutely.

> The fundamental expectation is to be able to read the document.

Question: how does one 'read' an image? Should all 'documents' be the preserve of alphabetical characters in a string, at the exclusion of everything else?

> In the print world it's perhaps the only expectation. Electronic publication adds some capabilities that may become expectations, such as the ability to use screen readers or to have hyperlinked indexing. But if you can't read it the rest becomes irrelevant.

Consider those who wish to repurpose the information contained in a document. Consider those who wish to print a selection, or to search for references to a text string (or reference some other entity), or who wish to merge one part of a document with another, or to extract some content to use in some other way. There are countless ways that an electronic document can be handled, and simply 'reading' it is just one possibility.

> Anything beyond plain text and, arguably, HTML, trades off that fundamental expectation

This assumes that the world wants only text in documents of the future, and denies the existence of visual aspects such as images, charts, movies, sounds, etc. 

Look to the iPad and electronic publishing to see where it might go. Mixed media is just one of the possibilities.

It's not just about 'accessibility' or 'future-proofing' - it's about user EXPECTATIONS. These grow all the time.

There was a time when end-user expectations of a printed article was very basic. There was also a time when electronic media was only capable of producing text. Thankfully this was very brief.

Talk to anyone under 30, and you'll find that their view of 'electronic publishing' is only limited by the ideas that you can throw into it. In their ideal world, any document will be accessible using a multitude of devices - one of which might be to re-purpose as a printable document for reading when 'off the grid'.

Some even hope that one day a document exists in a form which is accessible without the need for technology to translate it, thus on and off the 'grid' at the same time (I blame the Harry Potter film series, and their depiction of 'newspapers'...) 

Cheers all

iT