And we wouldn't want people to have the option of using an open, universal standard like PDF where they don't need Microsoft Windows to be able to view your files, right? By unleashing yet another microsoft-only fileformat on the world, windows' stronghold only gets reinforced. Imagine giving people a *way out*... Can't have that, can we?
Well, thankfully, there's an obvious, undeniable, arse-kicking solution. PDF viewers should gain support for Word documents!I can't see a point to MS doing their own PDF replacement.
If they did that, they would need an XPS making program, because Word doesn't cut it; it's tethered around the HTML world of tables and content that adjusts based on the user's input such as window width and text size. (And I've written many times that I really hate how almost all word processors seem to do that).
As for PDF... I am not happy with the way it's going.
The features Adobe is adding would be better off as developments for web browsers and web standards.
Saving, printing and emailing form content, for example, would be a marvellous addition to a web browser.
Commenting web pages in a freeform manner is currently doable with two extensions in Firefox. One uses a web service so that comments can be shared over the Internet, and the other is a bit ugly but improveable and uses local storeage to download whole web pages containing notes/comments.
A bit of HTML to position text Exactly As Written without taking user parameters into account would be a good thing to have. Browsers should be able to download required fonts from repositories, and, if available, the site being viewed.
This would brighten things up and be a lot easier on bandwidth than PDFs.
That's all going to happen eventually and I don't want two things for the same job.
With PDF doing all those things like forms and comments, I can see one outcome:
The PDF format making an unresolveable, irritating, invisible and failed attempt to replace HTML.
The attraction to PDF is that the files are like compiled HTML, and objects can be reliably positioned in a freeform manner similar to a regular image, which is ideal for eBooks and manuals.
Any additions beyond that are not worth it, which is why Adobe should stop messing around with it and move on.