[LINK] Government gives thumbs down to PDF format

[Fernando Cassia]

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 10:46 PM, Birch, Jim <Jim.Birch at dhhs.tas.gov.au> wrote:
> Not even with print really.  A PDF should be optimized for what is called the "mechanical specifications" of the target printing device

I disagree Jim. PDFs aren´t just created for printing on a given
"target device". PDFs are created so documents can be read while
preserving the original format regardless of the device and operating
system used to read it.

In fact, PDFs are rarely printed nowadays. They´re rather read and
information copied from them to other electronic documents. Of course,
I´m speaking of my own field of knowledge -IT workers and
journalists-.

---
"A PDF should be created
 - this include horizontal and vertical resolutions and the colour
process - to avoid problems like moiré lines and undesired colour
effects.  A commercial printer will typically have a much greater
resolution than home and office printers".
----

Anything above 2400dpi is overkill, unless you´re in the fine arts
business.In fact, last I heard, commercial magazines were print t 2400
dpi. Today´s desktop lasers are 1200dpi, half resolution. Nothing to
worry about (in other words, software interpolation can handle going
from 2400dpi to 1200dpi just fine).

---
  "In the advertising industry, we set ads which might appear in
multiple publications.  We used some smart software that built the
PDFs each publication time from the source files and design based on
the specs of the target publication."
---

That´s the problem you are in the advertising industry and thus you
think that the way you use PDFs is the same as everyone else. In fact,
that´s the problem with graphics designers as wells, when talking
about documents, you guys don´t think about INFORMATION, you think
about ASTHETICS and IMAGES.

When I open a PDF I want to READ something. That might or might not
include images as an accesory to give meaning to the information, but
the main purpose is to ACQUIRE some information (text= and understand
something (or read a good book about fiction and politics, for that
matter).

The same can be applied to PDF use by governments and politicians.
Documents are created to give out INFORMATION, not IMAGES and COOL
LOOK with an artistic meaning.

Back to PDF, it´s the PDF reader software which deals with screen
width, screen resolution, and the like (in fact, I´ve read PDFs
created for desktops on my 320x240 Palm Centro running PalmOS and
"Acrobat Reader for PalmOS"  just fine, the software handles the
resizing of the images and reflowing of the text).

It´s you, the graphics types, who do not understand that documents are
created for its TEXT first, and Images as an accesory.

A well-created PDF shouldn´t need to be created in 5 different
versions for different screen sizes or "output printers". A correctly
created PDF looks just fine on a Desktop and on a smartphone. The
software takes care of reflowing the text and zooming out images to
fit the screen size (which can then be zoomed in or panned by the
document reader using the functions of the PDF reader software).

FC