The Holmes Page: The Soap Box 1997/12/17

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THE SOAP BOX 1997/12/17

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1997/12/17: The PDF Format I recently sent the following e-mail message to Netscape in response to an article in their DevEdge News electronic newsletter:

To: devinfo@netscape.com, dev-news@netscape.com
Subject: PDF format in DevEdge News, Vol. 2 #24, 97/12/05
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 1997 22:21:01 -0500
From: Greg Holmes <gregh@ghservices.com>
Organization: GH Services

I just read in your latest DevEdge News of your intention of releasing "more" documents in PDF format.
This is completely unnecessary.
The PDF format is not needed for the documents given the fact that they are available as Web pages already. All you need to do is "ZIP" up the collection of pages that make up, for example, the JavaScript Guide.
Of course, your penchant for using the full URL in the source code of your hyperlinks (such as "http://developer.netscape.com/library/navigate.html" instead of simply "navigate.html") will cause a problem, but certainly less than converting to PDF.
My connection to the Internet is not a full-time one, so I have been using my own local copy of some of your documents, which I have had to edit to remove these over-specified hyperlinks.
Part of the value of HTML files is the "View Source" option, which allows me to see how it was done. This is not available in PDF, which is a closed format. Also, I am sure that you had to "simulate" the results of example HTML code in the PDF file, whereas they would easily show in the browser, if implemented in real HTML.
Of course, if there is some kind of "business deal" between you and Adobe, then my input is certainly not going to mean much!

Boy...I can be a real scrooge sometimes. And Christmas only a week away!

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