[KLUG Members] pdf v document attachments

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>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. 

That was, in part, me.

>If this is correct, it raised a number of questions for me, as the
>experience in academia seems different

No surprise there,  I think (and my admittadly limited experience supports) that what is 
really at play mostly in academia is a lack of systematic processes as well 
as even crappiwr user training than in a corporate environment.    

>--for example, my wife and I
>regularly send and receive document attachments: scholarly papers,
>letters 

Sure,  I see the same thing in many soho situations.

>(to retain formatting 

The key here is that they are nor REALLY accomplishing this.  Just near 
enough that most of the time they don't notice.

>resumes and CVs, etc.  Even journals want articles submitted in Word

Really!  Must again be an academic thing,  because it certainly is NOT true 
of any publication I've communicated with.

>format. (Probably because they need to be edited.)

I doubt it.  Most publications will strip all your formatting and redo it 
to match there style and standard.

>1.  Why would it be considered better to send these as pdfs rather than
>as documents? 

Security.  Opening an M$-Office document from an unknown computer is a 
virus enabling practice.

>(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

You don't even need a word processor.  Just a PDF viewer.

>--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?

Archival purposes.  You *WILL* be able to open and view a PDF 5 or 10 years 
from now.  You do NOT know that thus is true of an M$-Office document.  And 
as someone with old doc files I think any confidence on this issue is 
misplaced.

>2. As far as I know, MS Office does not have capacity to convert a doc
>to pdf. 

Nope

>So far as I know, most college professors do not as a matter of
>course have access to other software for creating pdfs. 

I have no idea what software they have, on our network you don't need any.

>Do businesses
>provide everyone with such access 

Yes, it is trivial to provide this functionality as a "network pronter."