David Greer writes:
>Based on recommendations from Alfredo and others, I have downloaded
>and installed Adobe Acrobat on various platforms (Windows NT and
>Windows 95). My experience has been *terrible*. If the thing works
>at all (which it often doesn't), it's so incredibly slow that I dread
>having to look at anything in Adobe Acrobat format.
I was one of the people who recommended that David try PDF as a document
distribution format. I originally made the recommendation so that he
could print some documentation I wrote for him; when he reported these
problems, I sent the original MSWord document. David was able to print
this successfully, though the formatting differences made hash of several
carefully-constructed pages.
But since I note that the only three people I know who've recommended PDF
are Mac users, I decided to try the PC solution myself this morning. I
downloaded the reader from Adobe at
<ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/Applications/Acrobat/Windows/ACROREAD.EXE>,
installed it and tried it out. I encountered none of the performance
problems that David mentions: rendering is noticeably faster on the 32Mb
100MHz 486 than it is on my usual machine, a 16Mb 25MHz 68030. It
rendered all the text on a full page in under a second, and the graphics
took another second or so.
This was on a complex document produced by Apple, undoubtedly using
careful construction, thorough QA, and the latest and greatest Distiller.
I decided to try the original document I sent to David, which I had
produced on an early version of Distiller and sent off in a big hurry --
probably a more real-world test. This worked just as well, and I was even
able to print to the 486 machine's locally-connected DeskJet.
The machine I tested on is a 100MHz AMD 486 with 32Mb of memory running
Windows NT 3.51 with Service Pack 4. I used a Stealth 32 VLB video card.
>Based on my experience, I would never publish
>anything in this format -- stick to HTML, at least the client software
>works, even if it doesn't render your material exactly the way you had
>in mind.
HTML is fine for displays, but not for producing printed documentation.
I've had my share of wonky HTML displays, though most of these were on
pages far more complex than those encountered in ordinary documentation.
If I'm writing documentation, I want the page layout to stay the way I
fix it. The layout is important to making the document easy to read, and
I use fonts, whitespace and other HTML-invisible elements to direct the
reader's attention and provide visual cues.
If the object is to provide an on-line quick reference, HTML has all the
necessary expressiveness. If you want the user to be able not only to
view but to print extra copies of your documentation, PDF is the best
solution. Incidentally, most high-end page layout programs will produce
both, so you can actually let the end-user make the decision.
-- Bruce
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Bruce Toback Tel: (602) 996-8601| My candle burns at both ends;
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