Re: Adobe's PDF

Peter Lister, Cranfield Computer Centre (P.LISTER@mail.cranfield.ac.uk)
Wed, 21 Jul 93 12:03:36 BST


Well, while we're on personal feelings.

I truly believe (yes, I'm computer person, if not really a scientist)
that the last people who should have the final say on the technical
document presentation are technical publishers. This applies to paper
and electronic versions. I really, really wish that the majority of the
technical docs I see had even a tenth of the strcuture of most of the
HTML around. I'd like to be able to change font sizes to what I need
(if my sight is not good, I need large print), not what someone has
decided I should have, and I want document layout to change
intelligently to suite me. Me, me, me, I, I, I. You want two or three
columns? I don't, I find it bloody irritating seeing lots of words
hyphenated; don't force me to read your doc that way.

While it may be argued that non-technical documents really does need a
human touch, the HTML policy of semantic markup is definitely what this
reader wants to see.

Peter