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Comment by seanw444 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah that is ironic regarding both the name, and the fact that it's one of the most viewable formats on any given system.

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> most viewable

It is, but the UX trying to read a A4/letter sized PDF document on a phone is absolutely horrible.

This is basically the same reason I think sports cars are horrible... trying to fit a 10 ton roll of steel in the backseat is nearly impossible.

It shouldn't be. 10 tons of steel takes up just about 1,300 litres. That should fit nicely in the back seat. Remember to secure your load.

> Remember to secure your load

I don't know much about steel coils, and I'm hoping that something that fits in your back seat isn't as dangerous as those featured in YouTube videos, but the idea that the primary concern is just strapping the thing down is kinda funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC6pn8n7MeY

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kDGfk-dOjq8

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=steel+coil+unwi...

No one wants to carry a 10 tons rol of steel in a sports car. The majority of people getting a PDF on their phone though, do want to be able to read the information in it easily and they can't.

So no, that's not the same type of complaint

only a4 sized pdf.

You can make a phone-sized PDF and it'll be just fine.

it's not the file format.

And then the experience on a larger screen will be bad.

It is, unless PDF supports reflow?

By design it doesn't. It is a stated goal.

Shouldn't "portable" in the context of a document format mean "comfortably viewable on most systems" rather than "yeah you can view it but it's gonna suck and you'll get eye strain"?

I believe this is called "responsive design", a useful but differentiated concept.

It's pretty cool how PDFs don't typically load resources from an external website or CDN. They are self-contained, and thus demonstrably portable.

Gross analogy: Have you ever been to a multi-day music festival? A port-o-potty in the dark is disgusting, but still somewhat useable compared the alternative of going to the bathroom in public. PDF artifacts are in the same ballpark.

Also, I think I'd personally dislike a "portable document format" that doesn't look identical on all systems. By making it visually identical everywhere, you of course sacrifice comfort on smaller screens by nature. But to me that's an acceptable tradeoff for knowing I'm looking at the document, as it was intended to be displayed. I don't think of PDFs the way I think of websites. My physical papers don't reflow text.

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