Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Morte" data-source="post: 2420138" data-attributes="member: 9413">Sort of. Normally it prints on part of the paper, and makes the margins bigger at the top/bottom or sides. You normally get a slightly expanded or shrunk version of the original content and odd margins, which is mostly harmless.Something like RTF or HTML would reflow the text to fit the new paper size. This would be lousy for printing your carefully laid out final document, but great for people who use the documents electronically. Not just read, but use -- e.g. copy the tables from that PDF RPG to make your own GM screen, or select a few paragraphs from the setting history and politics sections to make a player handout.PDF is meant to be printed. It's for delivering documents to printing companies where they will be printed on great big machines with prints runs of thousands, to become leaflets and magazines and books. The web came later. It became the dominant format the usual way -- accident then inertia. It got the role because it was available and adequate, and kept it because changing involved aggro.A format with physical layout like PDF certainly has its place in web distibution -- it's easy for publishers to crank out, and lots of customers just print anyway. A logical formal like HTML would be useful too, if anyone offered it. In an ideal world, publishers would supply both in one zip file. A pretty PDF to print, and an RTF/HTML file with minimum fuss that goes straight into the GM's wordprocessor/editor.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Morte, post: 2420138, member: 9413"] Sort of. Normally it prints on part of the paper, and makes the margins bigger at the top/bottom or sides. You normally get a slightly expanded or shrunk version of the original content and odd margins, which is mostly harmless. Something like RTF or HTML would reflow the text to fit the new paper size. This would be lousy for printing your carefully laid out final document, but great for people who use the documents electronically. Not just read, but [i]use[/i] -- e.g. copy the tables from that PDF RPG to make your own GM screen, or select a few paragraphs from the setting history and politics sections to make a player handout. PDF is meant to be printed. It's for delivering documents to printing companies where they will be printed on great big machines with prints runs of thousands, to become leaflets and magazines and books. The web came later. It became the dominant format the usual way -- accident then inertia. It got the role because it was available and adequate, and kept it because changing involved aggro. A format with physical layout like PDF certainly has its place in web distibution -- it's easy for publishers to crank out, and lots of customers just print anyway. A logical formal like HTML would be useful too, if anyone offered it. In an ideal world, publishers would supply both in one zip file. A pretty PDF to print, and an RTF/HTML file with minimum fuss that goes straight into the GM's wordprocessor/editor. [/QUOTE]

Verification