> Default to HTML: HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the standard for publishing documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. HTML provides numerous advantages (e.g., easier to make accessible, friendlier to assistive technology, more dynamic and responsive, easier to maintain). When developing information for the web, agencies should default to creating and publishing content in an HTML format in lieu of publishing content in other electronic document formats that are designed for printing or preserving and protecting the content and layout of the document (e.g., PDF and DOCX formats). An agency should develop online content in a non-HTML format only if necessitated by a specific user need.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/management/ofcio/delivering-a...
I think the general problem is that the end-user doesn't control an html document, e.g., for annotation, as a local record, etc.
Seriously, name a single device that has PDF support that doesn't allow you to view HTML.
I think you're conflating "html" and "things stored on a server", because all of your objections apply to pdfs stored on a server. The ability to save and annotate pdfs is not an inherent feature of the file format, they exist because the format is such a PITA to interact with that specialized programs have to be written. HTML can be saved just as easily, and usually is (on archive.org).
1. Saving as "Webpage, Single File" (.mhtml): Neither Firefox nor Chrome even showed up in the list of available apps to open it.
2. Saving as "Webpage, Complete": Opened in Chrome but images were broken. Also very difficult to open with the default file browser because it uses a flat folder view and the sidecar folder pollutes the file list.
I was hoping this would work, perhaps you will have different findings. I agree that HTML is the superior format in theory but usability in practice is often lacking. I'm resigned to using both depending on context.
As far as annotations, you can use the native <ruby>[1] tag, or strikethough, but if you mean "literally drawing on the text" then, yeah, you're looking for an image format at that point (which is fundamentally what PDF is), but we shouldn't default to storing text in image formats just because of one specific use case. (Also, as I said above, the only reason tools exist to easily do that in PDFs exist is because everyone insists on using a format that's hard to edit. )
Also, note that the context I was responding to was US legal documents, not something more presentation-heavy.
It's an ISO standard with a very large ecosystem outside Adobe. Many users and businesses I know don't use Adobe at all.
Such as? What doesn’t have a browser but can render pdfs?
We could have such a format if browser and os vendors were interested in supporting such a use case. Unfortunately, they aren't.
On the browser side, supporting all-in-one html files can be as simple a reading a single multipart-encoded page. Heck, if they support automatically serializing all external resources as datauris when saving pages, then most browsers will be able to open them without any modification.
On the OS side, operating systems can treat html files as first class citizens; execute them in an offline sandbox (most operating systems have embedded webviews), then extract icon, title, description and other metadata to present to the user. An icon the consists of a blank page with a small browser icon in the corner doesn't tell me anything about what the page is about. This needs to change.
In short, html can be easily made nicer to deal with locally thanks to all the parts already being in place. The problem is that no one (tech giants, os vendors) are interested in doing this.
Ctrl/Meta/Cmd + S should do the trick, or "File > Save page", and you get a HTML file you can open in any browser. If there is images, they'll most likely be loaded remotely, or worst case not load at all. But the rest of the structure is there.
Most sites have images as a relative path which won't work with saved html and there is also CSS.
What do you think of the epub format?
Despite all our advances, we lack an editable, local, multimedia, platform (and form-factor) independent, self-contained file - essentially a word-processing file for the 21st century (and I mean it's almost a quarter-century overdue). epub has that potential as a format, and being based on web standards it has capability, a universe of supporting tools and technology, and easy adoption to different applications.
But I haven't heard anyone else express that particular interest, and as of a few years ago epub doesn't allow annotations and is not stable (i.e., I don't know that today's epub file will be readable in 20 or 50 years) - two essential requirements for a serious local content, imho.
And even if it meets those specifications, we need epub editors that are the equivalent of word processsors for non-technical users.