Re: Adobe's PDF

Daniel Miles Kehoe ([email protected])
Mon, 19 Jul 93 13:09:03 -0700


Kevin Altis makes the point

> While PDF has promise, it has a completely different focus than the

> Web right now, specifically presentation instead of structured

> documents.

Yes, very true. PDF and WWW will be used differently. HTML is
suitable for structured documents. PDF is suitable (Adobe tells us)
for cross-platform exchange of unstructured documents.

There may be times we want to include unstructured documents within
an HTML document. For example, drawings or maps. Or documents that
were created in applications that don't translate to HTML.

Is PDF suitable? There will be questions of performance. There may be
insurmountable technical problems (e.g., how does a WWW browser
handle Multiple Master font rendering).

But we might consider accomodating PDF, if it allows us to bring in
documents from many diverse origins, especially if it allows us to
bounce out of the unstructured "presentation" document to the wider
web of HTML documents (through a hyperlink, if the PDF link
annotation were extended to accomodate URL/URNs and a browser could
handle this). It's worth exploring.

Regards,
Daniel Kehoe

P.S. Kevin's consideration of interface elements was also very
intriguing.