Actually, PDF is probably the best possible solution for what it's intended as, a picture-perfect reproduction of the document as viewed by the original author. PDF is an alternative to sending or saving an image of a printed document. It works well as a form-filling application, but that's an extension, not a core design goal.
I agree that the viewing software leaves much to be desired, but I find that it's generally functional, with a little tweaking, even on a Linux system where AcroRead is not available (I use gpdf and xpdf).
For archive and widespread distribution, there really is nothing that can match or beat PDF. I've never seen a situation where a PDF looked different on multiple systems, and I haven't yet encountered a platform where PDF isn't at least viewable.
As far as PDF files that open in strange views, the viewer is just opening the PDF in the view specified by the author, or in a default if no view is specified. One of my personal pet-peeves for PDF is that so many authors (mostly corporate types using Windows) do not specify a view, or specify a strange view (like 4-up or side-by-side page-at-a-time at 20% zoom), so the user has to change it on open just to see the page.
Postscript is the closest to an alternative, but it still suffers from the fact that the rendering interface is not defined in the standard, so the results may (and often do) vary somewhat between viewers. Also, most Windows users are completely unaware of Ghostscript and it's frontends, so they cannot view Postscript documents without considerable effort. I've heard that newer versions of Acrobat Reader for Windows will view Postscript, but I cannot confirm if that's true.
==Joseph++
FoulDragon@aol.com wrote:
> On a related theme, is there any real alternative to PDF?
>
> I hate PDF. Well, mostly I hate the reader software. It takes ages to load.
> It crashes when serving as a plugin, eating 99 percent of the CPU.
> Compatibility is scattershot at best (I understand some files that work under 6.0
> don't under 7, and the recent versions of the reader have very specific
> requirements to install on Windows boxes at least). And all so you can have a document
> that won't flow to fit the screen space or the user's viewing needs (how many
> times have you found a PDF decided to open at 34 percent, making it illegible,
> or 100 percent, but scrolling is required)
>
> The tenth circle of hell is reserved for the inventors of PDF.
>
> Someone needs to start an Ogg Documentarama project. :)
>
>
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