To PDF or not to PDF

[Ed McKie]

I have written up quite a few little family histories for various lines and have printed them as well as publishing them on my website. I no longer have the laser printer that I used to own which printed off the 20 or so copies that I needed at a reasonable cost. currently in the process of revising one of the books and am considering instead of converted the "book" to html and putting on the home page to convert to pdf instead and making it downloadable as it were.

Having been googling about the pros and cons of html against pdf and have come across a couple of opinions that "no one likes pdf"

is this true ?? I have no problems with the format itself and find it no different to reading a long document in HTML.

Any ideas ?

cheers..Ed

[barbara lee]

Hi Ed

I don't post what I have written on the net, but I send CDs to relatives. I choose PDF over Word because
1. The formatting is fixed and the page layout stays as I intend it to be
2. I have old-fashioned ideas about privacy and intellectual property. PDF is much harder to pirate / post on the net / mess about with in any way. I don't think my cousins would rip it off, but I don't know what their children or grandchildren would do !

Cheers

Barbara

[Richard1955]

Hi Ed
I'm sure there are still a few operating systems in use that can't view a PDF file and need photo editing software
but I think PDF seems to be the way we are going.
I think the quality should be better, you can make the files uneditable and more book like in appearance.

[Neil Wilson]

PDF software is generally preloaded on PC's these days, Adobe being the leading brand.

I send all by family history reports as PDFs, not everyone has Word and there are so many other word processing programs. Even if they are not using a Windows operating system, PDF can still be viewed. But other formats may be better.

[Mutley]

PDF format can also be downloaded to a Sony Ebook Reader, that might be useful in the future.

[Ladkyis]

Most eBook readers can handle PDF format. I think most FH societies use PDF when publishing their information on CD and ArchiveCDBooks certainly use it too. I send out my family newsletter in PDF because I know that everyone can read it - if they don't have a reader on their PC they can download AdobeAcrobat Reader free from several places.
I can't think why anyone would say it was not popular...

[Ed McKie]

I can't think why anyone would say it was not popular...

I understood that it refers to the need to open "another" programme, so therefor not fitting into high speed zipping around the net etc. having had a look at the comments again I realised that it referred to folk of a different generation. nuff said.

Ed

[Ed McKie]

Thanks for all the comments. Interestingly I had no qualms about converting to PDF myself and found the output closer to what I had in the text page than HTML output. All I have to do now is to learn how to upload a PDF doc to my home page so that it is visible and downloadable at the same time

cheers..Ed

[Ed McKie]

Hi Ed


2. I have old-fashioned ideas about privacy and intellectual property. PDF is much harder to pirate / post on the net / mess about with in any way. I don't think my cousins would rip it off, but I don't know what their children or grandchildren would do !

Barbara

Barbara I never inlude any private details on any published work, either on the net or in printed form so that is not an issue for me. the grandchildren have been given copies of the booklets with additional generation charts pasted in the back.
As for the intellectual property or copyright issue, it has never mattered to me. I have only once been paid for a printed copy !!

cheers..Ed

[MarkJ]

Hi Ed
I'm sure there are still a few operating systems in use that can't view a PDF file and need photo editing software
but I think PDF seems to be the way we are going.
I think the quality should be better, you can make the files uneditable and more book like in appearance.

A bit confused by the above. PDF is a filetype and needs a program to open it, not an operating system. As far as I am aware, all the major operating systems in use (Windows, MacOSX, Linux, BSD etc) all have either a PDF reader or some other program which allows you to open PDFs.

Personally, I am one of those people who hate PDF formats. My main gripes are - 1 The PDF is always bigger that the same file in another format, 2 PDF is a commercial format (and so are the Word .doc and .docx formats, which are no better) and a restriction can be placed on such commercial formats at any time by the company concerned and 3 Yes, it is frustrating to have to download a specific program simply to read these commercial file types.