[ProZsolt]

PDF is great what it meant to be, a digital printed paper, with its pros (It will look exactly the same anywhere) and cons (Can't easily extract data from it or modify it).

Currently, there is no viable alternative if you want the pros but not the cons

[bobbylarrybobby]

For me, the biggest con of PDFs is that like physical books, the font family and size cannot be changed. This means you can't blow the text up without having to scroll horizontally to read each line or change the font to one you prefer for whatever reason. It boggles my mind that we accept throwing away the raw underlying text that forms a PDF. PDF is one step above a JPEG containing the same contents.

[mumblemumble]

> Currently, there is no viable alternative if you want the pros but not the cons

I remember OpenXPS being much easier to work with. That might be due to cultural rather than structural differences, mind - fewer applications generate OpenXPS, so there's fewer applications to generate them in their own special snowflake ways.

[ProZsolt]

This is the first time I heard of it. When I search for it I only find the Wikipedia article and 99 links to how to convert it to pdf.

The problem with this is that from an average person perspective it doesn't have the pros. There is no built-in or first-party app that can open this format on Mac and Linux. More than 99% of the users only want to read or print it. It's hard to convince them to use an alternative format when it's way more difficult to do the only thing they want to do.

[degski]

It's a Windows-thing, since W7, IIRC. It's ok now, but it has been buggy for years, and yes, who eats xps-files, so better it is, but it's not more useful.

[tonyedgecombe]

It was too late and probably too attached to Microsoft to succeed. It is still used as the spool file format for modern printer drivers on Windows.

[carapace]

Screenshots of Smalltalk. (I'm joking.)