If Congress wants to pass a really useful law, they'll forget about y2k liability limits, and instead OUTLAW that stupid freakin' Adobe Acrobat PDF format. What a freakin' waste of time!!

(Thank you for letting me vent. Now back to the Senate report.)

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), March 02, 1999

Answers

Get a life Rick. PDF is a simple to use program and is a free download. It is very common is the business world. Besides working well and being free, what else do you need?

Big brother to hold your hand and download it for you? Monetary compensation for having to spend a bit of time to download it?

-- acrobat (acrobat@adobe.com), March 02, 1999.

The point is, chief, if the report was posted in HTML, I'd have it downloaded, printed out, in my briefcase, and I'd be on my way home right now.

As it is, however, I'll be lucky if I get out of here by 8 pm ET.

That's why I think it sucks. Yes, it's free--you get what you pay for. I can't imagine why you think it works well. Maybe you work for the highway department in my state.

Gotta go. I think the next chapter is finally loaded. Only 6 more to go.

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), March 02, 1999.

Someone once told me that Acrobat combines the worst features of print and electronics.

I agree that it is usually used inappropriately. The only valid use I can see for it is if absolute control of format is necessary, rather than letting your browser interpret HTML.

Such necessary uses might be financial and legal documents such as prospecti, pleadings, etc. That's it.

I agree it's a pain in the ass. Time consuming. And, if you want to get the actual text out of an Acrobat document, you got to run it through an OCR, with all the hassle that entails.

-- A (vbProg@MicrosoftAndIntelSucks.com), March 02, 1999.

The difference between bitmaps and CAD and crayola's.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 02, 1999.

Right on!

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), March 02, 1999.

Put the individual Adobe PDF links here, for all 17 sections of the Senate Report. Slightly easier to download and print -- very time consuming! (Remember to e the committee request a full-text format if youre so inclined). -- Diane

SENATE REPORT IS OUT ON THEIR WEBSITE

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 000YmD

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), March 02, 1999.

Acrobat PDF RULES !

It's especially good for electronc component datasheets. The documents look exactly like the printed databook pages, but you can copy the text to use in your own documentation.

Just "select all", "Copy" , then paste into wordpad or your favorite word processor.

However, like any tool, it can be misused. If you can't copy the text, its because the creator of the file scanned the text and added it as a bitmap rather than as text. This is not Adobe's fault! The same thing could be done on a web page.

I just checked several pdf files from several sources and I could copy the text from all of them,

-- y2kbiker (y2kbiker@bellatlantic.net), March 02, 1999.

duh

save it to disk instead of opening it

once you have it all downloaded you can open and print at your leisure

some people just don't want to figure things out

-- i deal all day with (stupid@user.tricks), March 03, 1999.