[KLUG Members] pdf v document attachments

[bfdamkoehler at worldnet.att.net]

I work in a large corporate environment and '.doc' format is almost 
completely universal. I couldn't agree more with the comment about being 
able to read word documents in a few years. I have tons of documentation 
that I wrote 10 years ago that is barely usable or unusable now.

Adam Tauno Williams 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. 
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>That was, in part, me.
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>>If this is correct, it raised a number of questions for me, as the
>>experience in academia seems different
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>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.    
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>>--for example, my wife and I
>>regularly send and receive document attachments: scholarly papers,
>>letters 
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>Sure,  I see the same thing in many soho situations.
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>>(to retain formatting 
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>The key here is that they are nor REALLY accomplishing this.  Just near 
>enough that most of the time they don't notice.
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>>resumes and CVs, etc.  Even journals want articles submitted in Word
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>Really!  Must again be an academic thing,  because it certainly is NOT true 
>of any publication I've communicated with.
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>>format. (Probably because they need to be edited.)
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>I doubt it.  Most publications will strip all your formatting and redo it 
>to match there style and standard.
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>>1.  Why would it be considered better to send these as pdfs rather than
>>as documents? 
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>Security.  Opening an M$-Office document from an unknown computer is a 
>virus enabling practice.
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>>(One reason is that, by design, pdf's are "portable
>>documents" and should create fewer problems opening them if one has a
>>different word processor
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>You don't even need a word processor.  Just a PDF viewer.
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>>--it was also noted that rtf is designed for
>>this purpose.)  Are there other reasons, reasons that would apply as
>>well in academia, that businesses send email attachments as pdf?
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>Archival purposes.  You *WILL* be able to open and view a PDF 5 or 10 years 
>from now.  You do NOT know that thus is true of an M$-Office document.  And 
>as someone with old doc files I think any confidence on this issue is 
>misplaced.
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>>2. As far as I know, MS Office does not have capacity to convert a doc
>>to pdf. 
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>Nope
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>>So far as I know, most college professors do not as a matter of
>>course have access to other software for creating pdfs. 
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>I have no idea what software they have, on our network you don't need any.
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>>Do businesses
>>provide everyone with such access 
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>Yes, it is trivial to provide this functionality as a "network pronter."
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