Re: Journals dying?, apparently rather slowly (was ,
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg106949] Re: Journals dying?, apparently rather slowly (was ,
- From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
- Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:46:51 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Stanford University
- References: <27994965.1264251543203.JavaMail.root@n11> <006e01ca9c5f$6e81d8b0$4b858a10$@net> <hjh86s$r4d$1@smc.vnet.net> <hjjqf2$91h$1@smc.vnet.net> <hjmjg4$dm$1@smc.vnet.net> <hjongb$4mp$1@smc.vnet.net> <hjrf76$mvf$1@smc.vnet.net>
In article <hjrf76$mvf$1 at smc.vnet.net>, Peltio <peltio at twilight.zone> wrote: > The reason the pdf format is so widespread is that everyone can create > a pdf file without having to buy Adobe Acrobat. Every word processor > let you save your work to pdf. You can even install 'pdf printer > drivers' that let you save in pdf whatever you want. same story for > another ubiquitous format: .doc. Note the core point here. Anyone -- repeat, anyone -- can create a document using their particular application of choice -- an application that is likely to be specifically oriented to their task -- that is likely to have a simple, optimized, easy to learn, easy to remember, substantially WYSIWYG interface with maybe a few dozen or at most a few hundred well-documented commands (not literally thousands of complex, poorly documented, and often interfering commands and options) -- an application that may well be freeware or shareware. And, these document creators can then either display their documents or communicate them to anyone else, in a stable, published, standardized, very well designed, and essentially open-source format, such that anyone else can read or display the same document, using a very wide variety of freely available tools, with high quality and very few glitches. There's no doubt that "actively interactive" documents are very nice, and that Manipulate[] is a superbly done and immensely powerful implementation of this capability. WRI can well be praised for it. But, "canned animations" (e.g., QT or Flash movies or slide shows or multi-page PDF shows) can provide a pretty good substitute a very good substitute for this in many cases; and PDF contains all kinds of simple interactive capabilities (clickable buttons and arrows, arrow keys, abilities to open and display external animation programs and files) that can go a long way toward meeting the need for very useful "quasi interactivity" if you want to call it that. > This is the reason many people also want a pdf reader on their machine. > PDF reader that has not to be necessarily that supplied by Adobe. There > are plenty of third party reader out there, many of them light and > protable (i.e. do not require installation and do not clutter your hard > disk).