I really wish they'd replace PDF with simple, basic HTML.
You can use any WYSIWYG word processor, even NotePad!, to create HTML, and the results are readable by anything that can render text.
Want to include special fonts, colours, or text styles?
Fine, but it still reads as *text* to a Screen Reader.
Want to include graphics, charts, graphs, or photo's?
Fine, but it's an Embedded Object that a Blind/VI user of a Screen Reader can skip without negating the ability to read the rest of the text.
You can control the layout, the visual presentation of the information all you like, but by using simple, basic HTML (no Java/Scripting, no ActiveX, no plug in, *just* HTML), then it's Accessable to everyone with a device that can display/read Plain Text.
You want to protect the contents, fine.
Include the MD5 sum with the file download, and let the user verify it.
MD5 doesn't match, someone's been fiddling.
If the user gets it from a verified source, then they know they've gotten the original, unaltered document.
If they get it from an UNverified source, then they *probably* also know to be wary of the contents, & will double check their copy versus the "official" version on whatever Official site you provide.
(And if they submit a version that doesn't match the official, then you reject it with a "Wrong version. Please download the following file..." message.)
But it *still reads as plain text*.
Want the user to fill it out & send it back?
Then Protecting it doesn't do either of you any good, since in order to fill it out, the user has to print it, manually fill it out, and *MAIL* it back.
Thus defeating the whole point of offering the document in a digital format for ease of use & faster processing.
*Sigh*
Back when I could still see, I'd never run across a PDF that couldn't've been rendered easier as a simple HTML file instead.
Even a book with lots of graphics, like a D&D Monster Manual, could have been made smaller by encoding the majority of it as HTML and merely including the linked-to images as separate files inside a ZIP archive.
When a 1Mb PDF consists of less than 10Kb of text, and a 3x5 card sized sketch of an amorphous blob, there's something seriously wrong with the idiot whom decided PDF was a "better choice" to store the file.
10Kb of text + a 100Kb image != a 1Mb PDF.
Stick the text & the image in a ZIP file, use "Store only" compression ratio, and it *STILL* comes across in less room than the 1Mb "compact" PDF.
*Sigh*
But that's just my logical brain screaming about illogical stupidity that deserves to be "rewarded" with the culprits being strung up by their genitals, & used as public Pinata's.
*Cough*
=-)p |
