Re: What layout/styling technologies have people used?

On 12/18/2013 06:23 PM, Tony Graham wrote:
> On Wed, December 18, 2013 1:06 am, Jean Kaplansky wrote:
> [ SNIP ]
> Indesign server is a very popular option for SaaS providers.
>
> BTW – in trade/professional/educational publishing most PDFs are
> considered “print ready” and prepared with profiles to go to printers.
> Yes, but there's also lots of consumer electronic products that ship with
> a CD-ROM containing PDF manuals that no-one's ever going to print (or
> read!), so it's hard to say what proportion of PDF files that are produced
> are ever printed.  But looking good on screen is as important as looking
> good on paper.
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Tony.
>
As far as PDFs go, and "looking good", one of the main reasons I prefer 
PDF to HTML for documentation (manuals, say) is offline accessibility. A 
PDF is usually self-contained and is a single file; the odd hyperlink is 
frequently not that important. Saving an HTML+CSS+JavaScript+image file 
website, on the other hand, may not grab enough stuff, or grab way too much.

Offline accessibility may be less important than 15 years ago, but it's 
still important.

I also find single PDFs easier to search than HTML websites. I don't 
mean search engines, I mean searching a single text PDF, versus an 
equivalent HTML website with 500 or 1000 pages. With the latter, if the 
HTML is online, you have to rely on the underlying search technology, 
which may be great or just mediocre. If the HTML is saved onto disk 
(offline accessibility) the best bet is often grep, which isn't what 
most users feel comfortable with. A single text PDF, on the other hand, 
much easier searching.

Now, these two features aren't necessarily the first things that a 
person thinks of when they consider how PDF is Portable - since the 
portability refers more to fidelity of display across platforms - but in 
my opinion they are very important small-p portability features.

Arved

Received on Thursday, 19 December 2013 16:35:14 UTC