PDF Pain
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I recently saw one of those lists of computer tips that people are prone to write once in a while and one of them bugged the snot out of me.
The writer suggested that it would be an extra neato nifty idea to scan all of one's paper documents and render them as .PDF files.
Pardon me for saying so, but I think this is a really stupid idea.
Text information should be saved as text.. in text type files... preferably whatever type will use the least amount of formatting to get the job done. Graphics or actual images of documents that might be needed for whatever reason would be much better off saving them as an image.. .gif, .png or jpg.
I've never liked the PDF format or the swiss-cheese-brained obsession that most people seem to have developed for using it. PDF files are WAY larger than they need to be for the information they contain. There is absolutely no excuse for a couple pages of text taking up over 100K. Never mind that file systems are monstrous these days, just because you *have* eighty gazillion terrabytes of space doesn't mean you need to try filling it up with over-bloated files that are bigger than anyone with a brain would want them to be.
Then of course, you need Adobe's bloat-ware of a reader in order to use the bloody things.. and editing a .PDF? Only if you want to pay a fortune to Adobe will you get that privilege.
Save yourself and everyone else a lot of trouble and aggravation. use the simplest file type that will do the job... sticking with plain un-formatted flat US-ASCII text whenever possible and good old fashioned image files for images. Then if you need more than that, stick with open format things that don't require buying somebody's bloat-ware black-box-that-calls-home of an overpriced editor to deal with.
Technorati Tags: bloat-ware, adobe, acrobat, pdf, file+type, oversized, large+files, keep+it+simple, over+complicating+things
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