[KLUG Members] pdf v document attachments

[Andrew Thompson]

On Wed, 2005-12-21 at 19:37 -0500, Eric Beversluis wrote:
> 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?

I believe one of the reasons PDFs are used is that their appearance is
VERY reliable. At least in theory, you shouldn't see text show up HERE
on one machine or viewer, and all the way over THERE in another. Most
editable document formats I know of don't control placement that
strictly, including Word. PDFs, however, cannot be easily edited, as far
as I know. Extracting blocks of text can be a nightmare, too. PDFs are
really best suited for presentation-only documents, although I
understand there is some support for form fillout as well.

> 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)?

OpenOffice, on the other hand, does generate PDFs. There's an extra
Export option under the File menu just for them. Since it can open
(almost?) all Word documents as well, and costs nothing but bandwidth to
acquire, I'd suggest that as your one-stop shop for DOC-to-PDF.

> 
> Eric Beversluis
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> Members at kalamazoolinux.org
> 
-- 
Andrew Thompson <tempes at ameritech.net>
The Imagerie