[herewulf]

Here are a couple ideas:

1. Dividing some amount of text into pages on a computer screen is unnecessary and annoying.

2. Adobe has a stranglehold on the format and is constantly dicking around with it. Lately I encountered a fillable PDF that Acrobat Reader refused to fill. I could fill it with Firefox but after saving it was no longer a fillable form for any Acrobat user. What's the point of a fillable form that disallows filling it out?!

3. Adobe increasingly supports JavaScript for form validation, etc. I can only imagine what a nightmare mess that is. If we're going to shoehorn in a browser, might as well just use a browser.

[zokier]

PDF is really a family of formats. There is the "good" (=sane) PDF, PDF/A-2, and then bunch of less good stuff (all the rest). PDF/A-2 doesn't have any interactive stuff, like forms or JS, and is a ISO standard that is not going to change under your feet. Because it is such mature and limited format, most readers should have no problem with PDF/A-2 files.