[rahimnathwani]

"a nice PDF with screen-shaped pages"

Right, but you can create such a thing with a word processor. Just change the page size or orientation.

Sure, the page breaks might not default to where you want them, but you can add page breaks wherever you want, and don't need to create a text box for each paragraph.

[sosborn]

More importantly (to me anyway), copying large swaths of text is so much more reliable in a word doc. Copying text in a pdf (derived from PowerPoint no less) is a special hell.

[hypertele-Xii]

Unbelievable, I've never copied text from a PDF without some error. It's baffling how broken that system is compared to say, text selection in web browsers.

If you start doing fancy CSS tricks you can break that too, of course.

[db48x]

In a PDF, every single glyph could be independently positioned. Most aren’t quite that pathological, but frequently every text run is independent.

[PaulHoule]

A PDF can contain metadata that correctly sequences the characters which is great for cut-n-paste, accessibility and reflowing the text. That metadata is frequently absent and the mechanism for incorporating it is by no means simple.