Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

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I wouldn't like HTML for government documents. They are perfectly fine for website, or live documents. But for anything published by government there will likely be a printed version, and the online "file" will need to be in sync with the printed version as well. As a paper / documents based format, nothing beats PDF/A.

I remember Obama said something along the line to tech leaders, "Your job is a lot easier when you only have selected group of customers to please, but when you have to cater for everybody and every interest group, things are a lot harder." Paper based document will continue to be used for a decade or two more.

Why cant we just have both? Too much man power in auditing or publishing? Well that is what tech is for, automate it. The tech should be catering for its users, which is not just the public but civil servants as well ( I cant believe I just wrote that ), not trying to force the tech on everyone else.

P.S - I thought PDF/A is an open standard. Why is everyone suggesting PDF is a closed format?

PDF/A is an open standard, but it's pretty rare to see a PDF document in the wild that is actually PDF/A compliant. People generally just use the built-in PDF export in some word processor (usually no PDF/A option at all) or use Acrobat (doesn't do PDF/A by default). And non-PDF/A documents can have a laundry list of odd closed features that may or may not be supported by various readers.

In general the landscape of PDF compatibility has improved a lot, but it's still a lot worse than HTML.

>And non-PDF/A documents can have a laundry list of odd closed features that may or may not be supported by various readers.

Are there test suit for PDF/A compatibility?

Yes. http://verapdf.org/ At the Dutch publication office we use this for spot-check testing for PDF/A-1a compliance.

> Paper based document will continue to be used for a decade or two more.

I hope not. I look forward to the death of paper.

You want to restrict information to people able to purchase electronic devices and data subscriptions?

That's a false dichotomy. If you can't afford a cheap phone these days you likely can't afford five books a year anyway.

Guess what libraries provide? Free book and computer access. Nothing changes.

You can take the the book/printed docs with you to read/study them at night, at work pauses, in the train, etc. Libraries don't usually let you take their computers with you, at least in my country.

Paper is an amazing medium for transmitting information: cheap, battery-free, easily copied or lended, transferable, DRM-free, non-proprietary, no monthly subscription needed...

The issues with batteries can be mostly, though not entirely, averted with e-readers, which use html (epub is just a zip with some xml metadata).

Now books, easily copied?

When's the last time you tried to share a copy of a book with a friend? Or did you buy a blank and copy it by hand? While that's a laudable example of dedication it's not exactly easy nor convenient.

Cheapness is likewise debatable, printing out a 300-pages book is fairly expensive.

Most other concerns are concerns only if you use broken-by-design sources.

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