Re:Deurbanising the Web [pdf]
by anigbrowl on Monday July 19, 2021 @05:21PM
(#27887390)
HTML can easily be offline-able.
Sure - if the publisher cares. From the user's standpoint, the safe assumption is that they don't. Of course PDF is No Good for many contexts, but for any sort of long-form document that is primarily meant to be read, it's so often better.
Also, if something is available in pdf, I can be moderately sure that someone else took the time to make sure it would be formatted correctly and print out OK.* If it only exists in HTML it's more of a roulette wheel experience.
* Unless some graphic designer thought 'gee this report would look so cool if the cover pages were black or some other highly saturated block of solid color.'
Sure - if the publisher cares. From the user's standpoint, the safe assumption is that they don't. Of course PDF is No Good for many contexts, but for any sort of long-form document that is primarily meant to be read, it's so often better.
Also, if something is available in pdf, I can be moderately sure that someone else took the time to make sure it would be formatted correctly and print out OK.* If it only exists in HTML it's more of a roulette wheel experience.
* Unless some graphic designer thought 'gee this report would look so cool if the cover pages were black or some other highly saturated block of solid color.'