Re: [xsl] Office 2007, XSL-FO, and the Adobe "Save as PDF" (non)native-support...

[Abel Braaksma Online <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I have some experience with publishing companies (more than most, I 
> would bet) and they do not use tools to convert XML to PDF. If they 
> are going to output to PDF they go straight to PDF and the /real/ 
> source is long gone or in some proprietary binary format (probably 
> most likely) when the document lives.
>
> The real question is why use PDF. It sucks. MS Word or OO Write is 
> better (not best).

Opinions vary. Though I wouldn't use the word "sucks", I agree that PDF 
is not always the best choice, depending on circumstances. But, in a lot 
of cases, PDF is the only choice, or maybe the first choice if PS can be 
considered second. Reasons for choosing PDF can be:

1. It's the only format allowed by European Guidelines to use for legal 
archiving of such things as bills, letters, invoices etc. When using 
WORM, I have seen no examples yet of any other format then PDF.
2. Though it may "suck", it *is* portable. Not so much can be said of MS 
Word. PS is also portable and OO is too.
3. Perhaps most important: people know PDF, it's market penetration is 
very high. It is, perhaps ufortunate, but I think not so, the de facto 
standard when sharing documents.
4. The printing industry can work very easily with PDF and PS, but has a 
real hard time working with MS Word, let alone OO. This is largely 
because PDF so closely resembles PS.
5. PDF's footprint is small (ok, depending on your design), especially 
for very large documents.
6. PDF is very stable, which is definitely not the case for MS Word and 
OO Write. Ever tried opening and splitsing a 50.000 page archived 
document, because you only needed pages 12.544 and 43.211? I have seen 
it in action in the printing industry and really, you don't want to try 
that with OO and/or MS Word!
7. If anything, PDF is definitely easiest to create using third party 
tools, much easier then MS Word or OO, if only because so many tools 
support it out of the box.

If you need any more reasons for using PDF, this list can be of any 
length. Granted, PDF is far from perfect, but compared to imperfect 
alternatives, it is really the best choice in many use cases.