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PDF vs RTF comparison

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Cliff Court

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Apr 24, 2003, 10:44:05 AM4/24/03
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I am trying to find the advantages of using PDF over RTF format for emailing documents. Some say RTF is better because you don't need a special reader etc. I would like to find a document somewhere that gives the pros and cons of PDF vs RTF if someone know of such a doc.

Thanks
Cliff Court

de Siem

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Apr 24, 2003, 10:53:38 AM4/24/03
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It all really will depend on what you need it for. I.e what should be in the document,etc

William A. Davis

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Apr 25, 2003, 12:42:08 AM4/25/03
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To say one needs a special reader is a bit off. Almost every one with a machine nowadays has downloaded the Acrobat Reader or purchased one of the more complete products. Part of the reason for this is that so many documents for software and related items come in a PDF form. Of course you still need Acrobat to create the documents in PDF form in most cases.

Some people also have problems with RTF. Not everyone has WORD. Some folks with WordPerfect have problems with some RTF files, as do folks with other word processors. Folks on workstations or with LINEX may not have WORD or related access to RTF, yet there is a version of Acrobat Reader for most platforms.

If nothing else, if you download the reader, you can read all the forms and manuals that can be obtained from the IRS. Maybe this is not a reason for you. However, having the ability to read PDF on a machine is becoming a given and the capabilities of presentation in PDF form with more consistency is far superior to RTF.

Yeah, those are my opinions. That's what you asked for.

Tobias Hugener

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Apr 25, 2003, 2:58:44 AM4/25/03
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In addition to William A. Davis's post:

In my opinion, the first question you have to ask yourself is, whether you want the reader to be able to edit your document or not.
With RTF he should be able to, whearas with PDF he won't (at least not with Acrobat Reader; there are some possibilities with full Acrobat or other tools like OmniPage).

Tobias

Andrew E D Clark

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Apr 25, 2003, 4:04:58 AM4/25/03
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PDF will look the same to all your users, irrespective of OS. This can be very important in legal publications, or where remote users need to discuss a document and refer to specific parts of it.

Michael Gula

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Apr 27, 2003, 10:40:08 PM4/27/03
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Cliff Court wrote:
>
> I am trying to find the advantages of using PDF over RTF format for emailing documents.

RTF will reflow the paragraphs, and I don't think it's possible
to embed fonts.

Also, there are different versions and variants of RTF, all
calling themselves RTF. Some support tables, headers and
footers, and some don't. Just saving a document as RTF is no
guarantee that it can be opened in all the programs that claim to
implement RTF.

If your documents have very simple formatting, RFT is fine. But
you might just as well use HTML as RFT.

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