Re HTML vs Acrobat

[David Blyth <dblyth -at- QUALCOMM -dot- COM>]

Here's an attempt at a fair summary of my and Arlen's discussion. The idea is
to drive towards areas of agreement.  Thus.... I _think_ that Arlen and I both
agree that:

   o PDF and HTML have their strong and weak points.

     - HTML is better for documents that change rapidly

     - PDF is better for page layout or for read-only documents

   o HTML is composed of many dialects.  This is of more-or-less concern
     to each of us.

     - Arlen is more concerned, because he feels Microsoft and Netscape
       will mangle the language beyond recognition as a standard.
       (The glass is half-empty and getting worse).

     - I am less concerned, because I feel Microsoft and Netscape have
       _already_ mangled the language beyond recognition as a standard.
       (So why worry about it?  The glass is half-full.)

   o The version of HTML to convert documents to is the version of HTML
     people are mostly likely to use in their browser to reach your page.

     [Arlen, do you agree that this is either HTML 2.0 or N-HTML 1.1?]

   o It's easier to convert existing documents to PDF

     - PDF distillers are fairly stable across platforms.

     - DTP --> HTML converters are finicky.  I feel they're getting closer
       to acceptable, Arlen does not, but we may be looking at different
       filters (I'm looking at rtftohtml 3.0 alpha3).

   o One big advantage of HTML is in creating an HTML page on the fly
     from a database.

     - Arlen thinks something like this will occur eventually for PDF.
       However, this is difficult - so fortunately it will be ready by
       the time we need to get around to it.

     - I maintain it's inherently easier to create pages on the fly from
       a database with ASCII (HTML) then binary (PDF).  See also Web page
       creation from a file server.

Arlen and I continue to _disagree_ over the payoffs of using plug-ins.

   o Arlen maintains that there is no significant difference between using
     Acrobat-plus-plugins and Netscape-plus-plugins.

   o I maintain that there would be no motivation for Netscape to move from
     Netscape 1.1 Helpers to Netscape 2.0 Plug-ins unless RAM was a significant
     difference.

     [Technical Detail: Acrobat invokes a separate application for many
      plug-ins - each of which uses up more RAM - while Netscape plug-ins
      are built into Netscape  - using up no additional RAM.]

I'm not sure why Arlen and I haven't reached basic agreement on the last
issue, as we're actually pretty close on the other items.

>>      I yield the topic to Arlen Walker... Hi Arlen!

>No more for me, thanks. I'm driving! :{>}

Seems more like a dance to me... but who's leading?  ;)

Your turn.



David (The Unbiased) Blyth
Technical Writer & Web Site Designer
Qualcomm

The usual disclaimers apply - QUALCOMM isn't that crazy.

Blodo Poa Maximus
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