[accordionclown]

dr. ed said:

> If I'm extracting content from works, I prefer source (LaTeX, Markdown, DocBook, etc.). Though that's another story.

except it's not actually another story. it's just a different part of the same story. and a format (like .pdf) which only handles one part of the story well (such as reading) but falls apart on another part (like text reuse) is not -- ultimately -- a good solution.

but that doesn't mean .pdf is worthless. yes, it's worthless as an archival format, and as a distribution format. (and those two are the ones which people commonly pitch as _strengths_ of .pdf, unfortunately, which is misguided.)

but .pdf is fine as a one-off output-format, spun out in an on-demand fashion by an end-user who wants .pdf for their own personal reasons (which require no justification to us). this is what you mention at the end of your comment, and i, too, am working on that...

[dredmorbius]

As you note: if PDF is what you want, then the option to request it, or whatever other format is your preferred option, would be excellent user-centric behaviour.

The idea of requesting, say, <item>.<extension>, where extension is [html,pdf,epub,djvu,txt,json,tex,md,csv,dir,...] would be interesting.

This presumes that there's a way to represent the content as, say, a directory listing, CSV, or JSON archive.