this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
231 points (98.7% liked)
Linux
10265 readers
717 users here now
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I otherwise agree, but what’s particularly wrong with PDFs? Almost anything can generate a PDF these days.
My biggest issue with PDF it's hard to read on screens. On top of that PDF forms are notoriously buggy, tables are almost impossible to machine-read without specialized software, and even copy-pasting can be a hassle.
I get that print will continue to be a thing to some extent, but I don't think that business or government documents need to be typeset with static pages. I think it's time we move on to a much simpler standard that is made for free-flowing text.
PDF has also been problematic as a standard format, since it referred to proprietary features up until 2023.
PDF forms are often horrible when done wrong; however, PDF files are really good for when you really need a document to look the same everywhere and don't want to worry about what fonts the recipient has.
The accessibility issues are legit, though.