Date   : Tue, 05 Nov 2002 10:51:39 +0000
From   : Paul Wheatley <p.r.wheatley@...>
Subject: Re: Which format do you want BBC manuals in? RTF/HTML

Pete Turnbull wrote:
> On Nov 4, 14:38, Paul Wheatley wrote:

>>Have you considered Latex? Thats a better archival format than PDF as you
>> can
>>easily move it to other formats (including PDF to view it if required).
>> With
>>PDF, you're a little more tied in.
> 
> That wouldn't be my first choice, as it's a pain to obtain all the software
> and fonts and set them up, and PDF exists for more platforms than LaTeX
> does.  PDF is also better at handling graphics, more likely to deal
> correctly with fonts (unless you go to a lot of trouble to get decent LaTeX
> fonts), is inherently compressed and therfore more space efficient, and
> usually easier to view.
> 
> 
>>Having said that, PDF seems to be a popular archival format at the
> 
> moment.
> 
>>Personally I'm not exactly sure why tho...
> 
> 
> Because more users are likely to have decent tools/viewers to deal with it
> than most other things (except plain text or possibly HTML).

The crucial thing about a good archive format is that its easy to get the 
data back out. With PDF that isn't the case.

I would argue more strongly for an alternative, but I don't think theres a 
particularly good one...

Paul
-- 
UK Project Manager
CAMiLEON
http://www.si.umich.edu/CAMILEON/
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/camileon
0113 343 5830