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Comment by nwah1 | Hacker News Reader

To me, cloud documents are better for most cases. They allow exporting to multiple file types, and allow you to edit after sending it out. While also often preserving revision history, and enabling collaboration.

The next best options would be open source document formats.

EPUB, ODT, SVG, exported HTML like MHTML (MHT)... all good options.

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> and allow you to edit after sending it out

There's whole industries out there where the immutability of PDF is a feature, not a bug.

Cloud documents allow sending out read-only links, and revision history can be preserved.

Even for such things as contracts, something like PandaDoc or DocuSign is way better than PDF.

I mainly see PDFs used for sending documentation, HR onboarding info, and contracts. None of those uses require immutable files, and they are easy to become obsolete.

Paid e-books could also be done through web readers. But EPUB exists.

For archival purposes, I recognize that there is a use for files, and I listed some options that are all better than PDF.

A PDF reader requires complexity on the order of a web browser. It has enormous amounts of legacy baggage. And it is proprietary and still adding more features regularly. Its existence is akin to that of Flash. It comes from an era where web standards were immature.

Technical drawings and visuals

replacing PDFs with cloud documents is cutting your ears off to spite your nose. so now what, instead of a potentially insecure PDF file, you have a potentially insecure webpage probably hosted by a company you have no control over that requires wifi connection to access, that you likely can’t trust the continuous accuracy of?

in reality what we need is a better standard

Would argue that avoiding the cloud is cutting off your ears to spite your face, but you are free to make your own choices.

If you are distributing code, will you share it via tarballs and zip files, or will you share it via a hosted service like GitLab or GitHub? Most people undestand that the latter is superior in every way, and you can still have the offline archives via having a full clone of the repo locally.

I would argue that the same logic applies generally. If you share your resume, it would be smarter to use a static github page tied to a git repo, than it would be to simply email a file. That file may have a typo or become obsolete. And in reality you are likely trusting email service providers anyways... ie the cloud.

Having a full archive of it locally with a local git repo means you actually aren't locked into them. My use of the term cloud was meant to be a fully general concept, and I wasn't advocating any particular locked-in concept. I'm simply advocating leveraging specialization of labor.

If you sew all your own clothing, build you own house, build your own car, etc... then by all means, run your own email servers, send zip files, and write your own operating system. Definitely keeps your trust surface low.

A pdf can be edited this "feature" is broken.

"Cloud documents"? Are we talking Google Docs here?

I mean, there's nothing special about that, it's just a very limited word processor that uses the ginormous web stack for rendering.

Pretty much impossible to map most usages of PDF to that.

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