To: Robert Bethge who wrote (6569 ) 2/2/1998 11:21:00 AM From: Scott Pedigo Respond to of 16892
We are thinking of using Acrobat PDF files for this and all other forms. Hopefully that will make them prettier and easier. Gasp! Nooooo... pleaaaase. Easier??? In a pig's eye. Everyone with a browser and a laser printer can print HTML forms. Not everyone can use PDF files. Last time I wanted a document that was in PDF, I had to try to download an Acrobat reader for Windows95. How many MB are we talking? 4MB? 8MB? I forget, but it was a LOT. With my 28.8 modem and the crapola bottlenecks in the Internet dragging down the transfer speed even below that of the modem, I was looking at a long download. I gave it a try, but after the connection stalled for too long, my access provider rather inconveniently automatically disconnected me. With Netscape 3.0, you can't restart an FTP transfer where the last one failed. After a couple of tries at reconnecting and downloading I gave up. *Assuming* that I had been able to get the Adobe reader, I would have had to disconnect, shut down any other apps, install the reader software, and hope like hell that it didn't break any other applications. My experience in this regard has been pretty negative. New apps are always overwriting .DLL files used by other programs and getting things screwed up. One or two times per year I just give up on trying to patch my corrupted system, reformat the drive, and reinstall Windows95 and the apps I often use. So a user without a reader will be forced to do a time-consuming download, and a possibly dangerous installation, just so that he/she can even look at a document obtained FROM THE WEB??? Kind of defeats the purpose of the Web, I'd say. If you want to add PDF in ADDITION to HTML, OK with me, the more choices the better, but please don't take away the HTML versions of the forms.