PDF is the ultimate WYSIWYG print substitute format. My mom in her 70s can create PDFs from OpenOffice/LibreOffice without much hassle. Ask her to create a web site of any type is going to be a problem. Now imagine the tons of business people who can navigate programs perfectly capable of creating PDFs.
PDF also works GREAT as an archival format. I log into financial accounts regularly and save PDFs for each statement period. Makes reconciling a snap. And provides a locally archived document history for audits from taxing authorities etc. I never have to resort to finding paper.
Finally, PDF works great as a native format that my office printer/scanner understands how to write to. I can scan those annoying tax documents sent to my office to PDF and archive on the NAS/cloud backup as I deal with it and know that I have my documents digitized so I can shred the paper.
This article was about people posting her PDFs online where they are intended to be read by a user encountering them with a browser. The authors seem to agree that PDF is a print substitute format.
I disagree that my statement was off topic. The author in summary states that PDF is "unfit for digital-content display". I gave a specific counter example of a type of regularly reviewed digital content that is beneficial to archive (in this case financial documents that may be necessary for tax purposes).
While this is just one use case of PDF framed in a browser, it still stands as one. I have also in my years regularly needed to archive the contents of a page - such as a receipt of a payment or a report on something.
In that case, printing the PDF seems to be one of the better practices. Saving as a Web archive (or whatever the format is called) is an alternative, but that is slightly harder to then print/fax or otherwise send to someone at a future date.
> I gave a specific counter example of a type of regularly reviewed digital content that is beneficial to archive (in this case financial documents that may be necessary for tax purposes).
How is that a counter example? If instead of PDFs your bank had given you an HTML file encoding the same content, then it would satisfy the same purposes and have the other benefits that the linked article lays out.
> PDF also works GREAT as an archival format. I log into financial accounts regularly and save PDFs for each statement period. Makes reconciling a snap. And provides a locally archived document history for audits from taxing authorities etc. I never have to resort to finding paper.
I don't have a problem with PDFs myself, but surely it would be better if your bank gave you these in text form so that you can actually easily and reliably process them?
The transaction exports in Quickbooks or Quicken format that can be imported GnuCash or whatever is helpful. However, if at some point there is an audit nothing beats the usability of easy for the auditor to understand visual format that is a date/time stamped record.
Also put in for a mortgage or mortgage refinance. What does the underwriter want to see? Two to three years of tax returns (PDF) and two months of bank statements (PDF) to prove the source of your down payment funds.
PDF also works GREAT as an archival format. I log into financial accounts regularly and save PDFs for each statement period. Makes reconciling a snap. And provides a locally archived document history for audits from taxing authorities etc. I never have to resort to finding paper.
Finally, PDF works great as a native format that my office printer/scanner understands how to write to. I can scan those annoying tax documents sent to my office to PDF and archive on the NAS/cloud backup as I deal with it and know that I have my documents digitized so I can shred the paper.