HTML vs. PDF?

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Laurie Miles wondered whether HTML would overtake PDF as a
 standard. Laurie, it depends on what type of standard
 you're talking about. HTML is next to useless in print
 publishing, a field in which Adobe is king and in which PDF
 stands an excellent chance of replacing PostScript as the
 preferred file format; thus, PDF isn't going to be
 challenged anytime soon in print, and certainly not until
 Microsoft attains the same credibility with publishers that
 Adobe has attained. That's not going to happen anytime
 soon, barring a miracle (an anti-miracle?).

 For online information, the jury is still out. Microsoft
 has decreed that everyone must have the internet on our
 desktops, whether we want it there or not, and in the
 Microsoft environment, it's hard to see how any other
 standard than HTML help will survive in the long run. I'll
 be interested to see whether they port their HTML help
 engine to the Mac for use with Microsoft products there. I
 know nothing about UNIX online info., so can't comment.

 For the internet, the jury is also out. PDF is becoming
 increasingly prominent on the net where typographic style
 and layout are important; you still can't format something
 as easily or consistently with HTML as you can with PDF...
 even with cascading style sheets, HTML is unlikely to
 attain anything approaching the sophistication of PDF in
 the near future (if ever). HTML is still dominant on the
 web, since it provides the skeleton for all web documents,
 but PDF (and Java and ShockWave and LiveAudio and etc.
 etc.) are rapidly becoming the skin and muscles that make
 the skeleton work.

 So the new question becomes: Which of these situations best
 fits the one you and your clients are working in?

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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