[KLUG Members] pdf v document attachments

[Eric Beversluis]

At a recent KLUG meeting someone noted that in business people don't
send email attachments as word processing documents but rather almost
always use pdf's. 

If this is correct, it raised a number of questions for me, as the
experience in academia seems different--for example, my wife and I
regularly send and receive document attachments: scholarly papers,
letters (to retain formatting rather than squash them into an email),
resumes and CVs, etc.  Even journals want articles submitted in Word
format. (Probably because they need to be edited.)

1.  Why would it be considered better to send these as pdfs rather than
as documents? (One reason is that, by design, pdf's are "portable
documents" and should create fewer problems opening them if one has a
different word processor--it was also noted that rtf is designed for
this purpose.)  Are there other reasons, reasons that would apply as
well in academia, that businesses send email attachments as pdf?

2. As far as I know, MS Office does not have capacity to convert a doc
to pdf. So far as I know, most college professors do not as a matter of
course have access to other software for creating pdfs. Do businesses
provide everyone with such access (that is, those that use Word or Word
Perfect)?

Eric Beversluis