From vsnyder@vanpc.jpl.nasa.gov  Mon Jun  5 23:15:14 2000
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Subject: PDF or WORD or ???
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Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 14:20:52 -0700
From: Van Snyder <vsnyder@vanpc.jpl.nasa.gov>


Loren Meissner has wondered whether PDF is a standard, and if it's not,
why it's better than WORD, which isn't a standard.

I prefer PDF for two reasons:

1.  WORD isn't the only processor that can produce PDF.  Essentially every
    interesting word processor can produce PostScript, and there are good
    tools to convert PostScript to PDF.  Some of these tools are free.
    Some text processing systems can produce PDF directly.  In particular,
    I use pdflatex, which produces PDF from LaTeX without going through
    the intermediate .dvi format, and therefore not through the
    .dvi -> .ps -> .pdf stages.

2.  PDF readers are ubiquitous, free, easy to install, and don't need a
    lot of resources (contrast 100+MB for StarOffice for Linux.  I find
    StarOffice to be too slow and to have too bizarre an interface to use
    for anything I don't have to use it for, which at present is only to
    read WORD's .doc files.  Maybe if everything I did fit into StarOffice's
    paradigm, it would be OK, but so far, I suspect I would have trouble
    running my compiler, debugger, Maple and IDL from within StarOffice.
    Maybe if I got more memory....

Yes, WordPerfect versions, at least 7+, and StarOffice can read and
write WORD files, but WORD .doc format is a moving target.  Therefore,
to be _sure_ of being able to read .doc files in future, I would need
to be prepared to install frequent upgrades of whatever I would choose
to use to read .doc files.  PDF is probably also a moving target, but
much more slowly moving, and maybe at least upward compatible.

Best regards,
Van Snyder