why does academia love to use pdf files?

College Confidential Community
1

<p>I honestly can't see why they can't use the more convenient HTML format.</p>

<p>There's universities releasing announcements as pdfs. </p>

<p>Then there are also annoying (really exciting) research papers being released as pdfs. </p>

<p>Worse is when you're browsing through the list of appropriate material (be it announcements or academic papers) and you have to brace your computer for opening hundreds of megabytes' worth of pdfs' just to find relevant documents.</p>

<p>Or when all you want is just reference a few sections each in several papers just so you can make a comprehensive citation for a single paragraph for YOUR paper. Rinse and repeat for the rest of your paper.</p>

2

<p>Cause they can. It looks up to date.</p>

3

<p>My guess about the research papers is that it’s harder to just copy and paste text from the .pdf files, so they upload research papers that way instead.</p>

4

<p>Also, it probably helps with formatting (footnotes, for example, are difficult to implement in HTML without investing a substantial amount of time in doing so).</p>

5

<p>Also, it makes it nearly impossible for your average joe to change the wording in the document.</p>

<p>Just think if they released it in Word documents…not the best choice.</p>

6

<p>

</p>

<p>Meh … just use export to HTML function. (That’s in OpenOffice … which is what academia should use!)</p>

<p>I make my papers in Wikipedia on my own private userpage and then I just export the source. :D</p>

7

<p>HTML is not an easier option; the easier option would be Word files, but I prefer PDF over Word.</p>

8

<p>Export to HTML makes it difficult to actually save the file, especially if there are images in it. In fact, whenever I need to save HTML files, I actually print it to PDF.</p>

9

<p>I find that its easier to use PDF because most word processors have a print to PDF, which then looks identical to the paper version (formatting, spacing, etc etc). It’s also generally protected from editing also.</p>

<p>If its the fact that adobe reader is too slow, there’s alternatives (the one i use is foxit reader)</p>

10

<p>Because not everyone has M$ word. i don’t. Adobe reader is free.</p>

11

<p><em>bangs head against wall</em></p>

<p>at least in math and physics, pdf’s are common because LaTeX is king in those fields. word, html, etc. are completely inadequate for serious scientific typesetting, so people use LaTeX. also, not everyone wants to compile .tex files every time they want to read a paper, and postscript files can be kind of annoying, so people pipe tex output to pdf as a container format.</p>

<p>to be honest, i think LaTeX is so beautiful that I use it for humanities papers, too.</p>

<p>anyway, if you guys are using adobe reader, it will be slow. you should use foxit reader or some other third party reader if you run on windows. better yet, use linux and xpdf.</p>

12

<p>Go back 5 years or more and everything was post script. Some professors still only use that.</p>

13

<p>I find M$ equation to be equally elegant. In fact, my math teacher this year asked me several times if I typed up my report with LaTeX. I only know about LaTeX because my sister swears by it.<br>
Framemaker, Visio, etc… can convert their documents to pdf. I guess being the common denominator format helps making it so popular.</p>

14

<p>Why should things be protected from editing? It also makes it way more inconvenient to cite … </p>

<p>Honestly, it’s information – information is supposed to be revised and distributed in a medium that transcends all boundaries – it is how society progresses. I mean, I could edit Bush’s speeches too (and boy do they need it!) – but Bush isn’t worried about someone passing off his own speeches (if they are his own) as their own.</p>

<p>Regarding equations, what I also do is make my equations in the Wikipedia sandbox, take the urls of the resulting images and paste them onto my page.</p>

15

<p>Why would it be more inconvenient to cite? It doesn’t prevent you from copying text and pasting it elsewhere.</p>

16

<p>

</p>

<p>That’s not exactly realistic for people who write papers. Which are the subject of your op. There’s absolutely no reason to ever write something in html. That would be an fantastic waste of time, as HTML isn’t meant for any type of document. PDF, however, is, and it’s an extensively used and supported format. </p>

<p>Your problems here seem pretty trivial. pdf files aren’t protected from editing, by the way. There’s plenty of pdf editors out there, including free ones if you don’t have access to acrobat.</p>

17

<p>For Mac, Unix or other format users. pdf is the most compatible for all formats.</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>It wasn’t meant to be, but it has since been augmented to a fantastic format.</p>

<p>The thing is, there are many papers released in HTML, but they are like 10-20% of academia. There are no issues with such HTML papers, but there are many issues with bulky pdf papers …</p>

19

<p>PDFs are used so often in Academia because most professors barely know how to turn on their computers yet alone publish something that is easily accessible.</p>

20

<p>

</p>

<p>HTML would be easier for professors to access.</p>

<p>I still don’t see the downside to using PDF. In the journals I’m familiar with, they publish the PDF files and the print journals in exactly the same format, which allows for some fancier formatting. I don’t see how it would be more efficient to do a two column layout with HTML than doing it in a word processor and printing to PDF.</p>

<p>Outside of academia, I see PDF used even more often (though I’m not sure about research). Pretty much everything my company sends out, external and internal emails, gets converted to a PDF. If you want to save a PDF file, you only need to worry about ONE file. If you want to save a PDF file, you have to worry about the base html file as well as all the images associated with it. It just becomes too much of a hassle.</p>