Posted by Sanders Kaufman on 11/17/07 09:55

"Alan M Dunsmuir" <alan@moonrake.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:fhm3vn$p0s$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk...
> Sanders Kaufman wrote:
>>
>> Nearly EVERY web page is "printable quality".
>> Beyond that - you can use CSS's @ functions to specify how to handle
>> printed output.
>
> That view seems to miss the point rather badly.
>
> Apart from a number of basic deficiencies stemming from the underlying
> specification of HTML/CSS, there are the problems caused by varying
> renderings on differing PC/Mac configurations and by the use of different
> browsers.
>
> A pre-formatted PDF sidesteps these problems neatly.

Yeah - it's very feature rich... to the point of being bloated.
That's why PDF and RTF are third-party plug-ins, and why their features were
not included in HTML specifications.

There was some discussion about it during the drafting phase - but it became
readily apparent that trying to make every browser page into a feature-rich
desktop publishing application was just too much.

[Back to original message]