I hope I haven’t offended Mozart.

Thanks for a very thorough post!
An interesting read, indeed!

My response concerning situations where I would recommend PDF has been posted to my website. Hopefully this will be viewed as the thoughtful and reasoned response I promised.

In that case, we totally agree.

Different solutions for different usage.

Oh, definitely. Each thing suits best in certain scenarios.

…nor send a HTML-file with a cascading stylesheet to a printer

Well, since most web pages should be able to print, that will be the option you’ll probably have to go with in most cases (since producing PDF pages for every page just for a print version can often be totally overkill).

I would never ever make a website in PDF, nor send a HTML-file with a cascading stylesheet to a printer. Ok. Think I made my point now. =)

Thanks for expressing a designer’s point of view.

Regarding kerning, it can be a matter of CSS, but of course that won’t solve all possible scenarios.

When it comes to adding/changing notes, that’s not what most web pages are about.

About printing, it totally depends on what the usage is and what kind of resolution you want to offer. You should naturally offer your web page in a printer-friendly version, again through the usage of CSS.

And sure, there are alternate viewers that won’t need Acrobat Reader, but most people don’t know about them and most people aren’t Mac users.

Another thing that isn’t mentioned in the post is also the usually humongous file size compared to what content you get in it.

But don’t get me wrong: of course there are cases when PDF files are the way to go, but mostly it’s, in my opinion, vastly overused.

Besides, I never ever use Acrobat Reader when opening a PDF-document. But then, I’m a mac-user and can fire up Preview.app (built into OSX) in like.. a millisecond and then open a 200-page PDF-doument in… well.. a second. Of course, I can make a PDF from within any program (also built-in).

Ho hum.. now it’s time to go render me some PDFs.

=)

As they expect a layout similarity, no matter the channel, PDFs really are their saviour.

Yes, this seems to often be the case, with showing no regard to the end user experience. I also think people that make this choice really don’t know about the options available, and they’re also the ones that’ll probably never make their PDF files accessible either.

Carl,

No problem at all.
When you feel that you have the time and will, I look forward to a reply. Maybe as a post on your web site linked from here?

I sometimes gets the feeling that people uses PDF to protect their Word/Powerpoint documents, which in many cases are an organisations internal document formats, and compared to publishing MsOffice files, PDFs are to prefer…

I think the main problem is that publishers focus on the published documents, not the information within.
As they expect a layout similarity, no matter the channel, PDFs really are their saviour.

Carl:
I think the “one page Fliers” you mention in your “rant” (linked above) are the target for Macromedia’s Flash Paper, their keyword is “fast-opening”

It depends on what features we’re talking about here. But when it comes to your specific example, these web browsers support MathML natively (anyone, if I’m out on thin ice here, please correct me):

Mozilla web browsers
Amaya

Mabye this page clarifies the general state of MathML support: Publishing XHTML+MathML Documents on the Web

Joe,

Really good seeing you here!
Carl, do you want to elaborate on your comment?

Which parts were “too lenient”?

Thanks for the link.
Joe’s article is definitely good and useful, but I also understand Tommy’s reaction since such quotes as Joe’s can be terribly mis-used by the wrong people.

You state…

now at least we have a guide how to make them accessible when we have to use them, thanks to Joe.

…a point well taken and one that I should have made in my post.

Joe’s guidelines of when PDF is acceptable was good — somewhat too lenient from my perspective, but something to work from.

As far as PDF accessibility is concerned, Joe’s article is very good

Absolutely, and I think it’s good that you state that, I’m not sure that it came across in your article.

Don’t worry about your rambling, at least to me it’s entertaining.

Derek,

The problems with PDF quite often exist because people produce PDF because it is the easiest choice, not the best choice.

Yes, that sums it up. It’s the ol’ “oh-it’s-so easy”-attitude spread across the web that also leads to poorer standards compliance, lesser accessibility etc etc.

it doesn’t justify opening an application whose footprint is two to three sizes bigger than the web browser itself just to view a document that could’ve easily been coded with HTML

And I think that’s the most important thing that many people may have missed (present company excluded, of course!) in Joe’s article. Most PDFs that are on the web shouldn’t be PDF in the first place. If people followed these simple guidelines, PDF wouldn’t really be the problem that it is:

1. Use PDF only in the cases where it is the most appropriate delivery format.
2. When you do use PDF as an alternate format, make sure the PDF is accessible.

The problems with PDF quite often exist because people produce PDF because it is the easiest choice, not the best choice.