[gumby]

PDF has been bad news, as it embodies assumptions from an earlier age: how paper works.

I want to read flowable text that adapts to my screen and my size needs. I want to be able to reliably select and extract text. I don’t need something that apes an archaic IO system (printer+paper) with all its flaws and, when on scree, none of its advantages.

[gnicholas]

Agreed. Adobe's recently-announced [1] Liquid Mode for mobile devices is a step in the right direction.

1: https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/23/adobes-liquid-mode-uses-ai...

[mongol]

Seems to be a feature of their reader rather than an improvement of the format. I am unsure if that is actually in the right direction

[gnicholas]

That is my understanding also. It would certainly be better if it were part of the format, but I imagine they're very concerned with backward compatibility. So perhaps this is the best we can hope for from Adobe.

[Gibbon1]

I use pdf's for data sheets. Last thing I want is flowable text. Also 25 years on in selecting and extracting text from html is hot garbage.

[pjmlp]

I still use lots of paper and PDF is the ideal format for it.

There are other formats for flowable text in screens.

[rhn_mk1]

The difficulty is that people don't worry about it and turn everything into PDF, even if it shouldn't. How many scientific papers are actually printed out for reading? Yet the huge majority of them are published as nothing but PDFs. Good luck reading one on mobile.

[pjmlp]

Most of them, conference proceedings by Springer and friends are still a thing.

I have Acrobat and Moon+ Reader on my mobile.