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PDF is the worst document format, apart from all the other formats. When developing software to read or process PDFs the PDF spec can always deliver a jump scare like no other spec. But to give it credit it broke Microsoft's stranglehold on documents, not completely, but back in the mid 2000s organizations no longer required you to submit things as word documents anymore.


Adobe file formats never had the reputation of being easy to work with. I spent some time with the CFF font format, and I can say it was not a pleasure.


But is the word XML format really bad nowadays?


That's the thing. Every PC, Mac, Android, iPhone can display PDF files. You can capture all elements of a website on one.

It just works.


> It just works.

As long are you're using the one true program: Adobe Acrobat.

A few years ago I did the mistake of printing a PDF shipping label from a web browser ... which left a critical bar-code blank.




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