fillable pdf

[FoulDragon at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/16/2006 11:18:33 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
plug-discuss at stcaz.net writes:
>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.

Well, then, I suppose the problem isn't PDF, but then people who insist on 
using it for all the wrong things.  People seem convinced it's important to 
preserve formatting on a lot of documents where it really doesn't matter, 
especially manuals and brochures that would be entirely suitable as less clunky HTML 
and image packages.

And for forms, it's terrible because it violates the system's UI convention 
for forms.  Widgets don't look like native widgets, so you have to guess what 
has to be clicked/typed into and what sort of data may be acceptable.  Of 
course, if they were normal text boxes, then it wouldn't look like the original 
document. :P

An example of bad usability:  State of California form 9000R (I had to 
prepare one at work recently)-- there's a box for a social-security number, and it 
has dashes already written in.  You'd expect it to require data entry in three 
parts "around" the dashes; instead, you enter all nine numbers in a single 
string-- writing OVER the provided dashes, and then, with no warning, it formats 
the digits around the dashes.