[LINK] Government gives thumbs down to PDF format

[Tom Worthington]

Webb, KerryA wrote:
> ... agencies might be thinking of their users, who'd find it
> generally easier to read a PDF than an ePub. ...

No, the agency staff are thinking of their own convenience in using PDF 
and of impressing their bosses, not the needs of the user. What would be 
most convenient for the user would be the summary of the document as a 
web page, followed by all the other content of the document as web 
pages, followed by the option of downloading the entire document. 
Literally the last thing the user wants is a whole report downloaded in PDF.

The agency, or Minister, wants a printed document they can show off at a 
launch event. So the priority is to produce a pretty looking printed 
document. A few dozen, or a few thousand, such printed copies are 
produced as gifts. Most of these are never opened: they are printed, 
distributed and then destroyed without having been opened. The people at 
the launch do not read the paper copy. Journalists will just read the 
media release, executive summary, flip through the rest, write their 
story and the throw the document away. Most of the remaining printed 
copies are sent to organisations and institutional libraries which, 
after checking the document is available online, immediately dispose of 
the printed copy.

The easiest way to generate an electronic document from the electronic 
typeset material is with PDF, so that is what is done. The priority then 
is to make the PDF version look like the printed "original" (an original 
which almost no one ever sees).

As making the PDF easy to read online is not a priority, in some cases 
agencies simply use the same PDF file as for the printed edition, 
complete with very high resolution images, which make the file very 
large. Most agencies at least take the trouble to make the images 
smaller for online use. But the documents are still designed for 
printing out, not for ease of online reading.

What I would like to see is the online version of the document being the 
"original" and the printed version just a disposable "copy". What most 
people will read is the web version of the document, broken up into 
individual parts (chapters), so that is what should have priority. The 
chapters can also be provided as an e-book and perhaps even as PDF. When 
printed out the document summary would look good enough to hand out at a 
launch.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra