Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Finnucane 2064 days ago
It's pretty much essential to the publishing industry. Until we actually stop printing books, we'll be using pdfs.
2 comments
axiolite 2064 days ago
There's nothing special about PDF. Only reason PDF is useful is because it's easy to convert to/from Postscript and Adobe was pushing out a free viewer for PDFs but not Postscript files. That, and the difference in fees they chose to charge on the formats.
link
Finnucane 2063 days ago
That may be true, but it is so deeply embedded into publishing workflows now it would be hard to dislodge.
link
BlueTemplar 2063 days ago
Some in the publishing industry have actually moved to HTML - O'Reilly comes to mind.
link
Finnucane 2063 days ago
For online and authoring, sure. If they print the books, it gets converted to a pdf.
link
BlueTemplar 2063 days ago
Which is what pdfs should be (mostly) restricted to.
link