Re: IMG SRC=0

At 10:09 AM -0700 7/2/96, Gayle Kidder wrote:

> Paul Prescod wrote:
> > PDF is perfect for a poem with eccentric layout needs and supported in
> > browsers on all major GUI platforms.
>
> But PDF readers are huge and imperfect machines, not in wide use yet,

No less huge and imperfect than the market-leading browser(s) with which
they are now integrated, albeit in beta. As for wide use, you're right of
course, though I suspect that a year from now, PDF will be far more common
on the Web than structured, style-sheet compliant HTML. Already I think
more people know and appreciate what PDF can do than know and appreciate
what structural markup is. Both groups, alas, seem small compared to those
who hold to a WYSIWIG ideal for HTML.

> and the files take humungous amounts of time and bandwidth to download.

3.0-generation PDF can be served one page at a time from most servers,
minimizing the delays. A given amount and quality of textual and graphical
content is almost always potentially (and very often actually) smaller on
the wire as PDF than as any sort of HTML, especially the image-laden kind
that "WYSIWIG" editors encourage. But again, you're right about the status
quo. I think PDF can help us move beyond it, not into "the outer room."

________________________________________
Todd Fahrner
fahrner@pobox.com
http://www.pobox.com/~fahrner

The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the
infinitude of books, must be transcended. THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY.

--El Lissitzky, 1923

Received on Tuesday, 2 July 1996 14:39:39 UTC