PDFs are overrated, but PDFs bros are loyal.
Discussion
As much as I detest most formats, etc from the propietary world, I'm impressed at the utility and longevity of PDFs.
When I want a true interoperable WISYWIG, that's read-only, there's no comparison (as embarrassing as it is to admit).
Making the PDF reader universally free, and licensing it other devs so their formats can be easily converted had a lot to do with its ubiquity, and longterm success.
Yeah.
It uses binary to display plain-text, and has to be interpreted by PostScript, but end users just see the resulting image and don't realize the technical bloat on top.
I feel like the original purpose of the PDF is nice; a universal document format that everyone can use regardless of their system. But it seems like it's got a bit more complicated over the past year or two.
It was good for printing.
We're planning to export to PDF, LaTeX and ePUB, (and maybe some others, we'll see), so we might have to have a read-only viewer for the preview of the export. But they're snapshot images and not something to effectively analyze, or interact with.
Plain-text shouldn't live as pictures.
They are horrendous but too big to ignore. I have hundreds of free books only available in pdf.